WORKSHOP ABSTRACTS

Day One (1^st July)

Dialogue with the Dead: The Solidarity for Peace in East Asia

Yeong　Hwan Kim (Centre for Peace Museum)

My presentation will introduce a grass-root activity, the East Asia Collaborative Workshop, which has been held in various regions in Japan and Korea by people from different backgrounds. Since 1997, the participants have made efforts to overcome conflicts and fractions over the historical memories of the Japanese colonization in Asia. Presenting about the Workshop, I will also discuss how ordinary people reconcile the past beyond ethnic and national boundaries, and how we develop and enhance solidarity for peace at the grass-root level.

Peace Building in Northeast Asia: Linking Historical Reconciliation and Security Cooperation

Peter Van Ness (Australian National University)

This is a report on a collaborative research project, begun here at the ANU in 2006, which attempts to link ideas about achieving reconciliation among the countries of Northeast Asia to policy prescriptions to enhance security cooperation in the region. Our objective is to produce concrete and realistic policy proposals for peace building in Northeast Asia. Working with colleagues from China, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States, we want, for example, to help make a success of the Six Party Talks on the DPRK nuclear programs, and to provide useful ideas for a potential East Asian Community. To date, we have convened two international workshops: the first, on “Reconciliation between China and Japan,” held at the ANU in August 2006; and the second, on “Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia,” held at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul in April 2008. A third workshop is planned for Taiwan in October 2009 on “Comparing Strategies of Reconciliation.” Papers from the first two workshops have been published in two special issues of the journal Asian Perspective (31:1, 2007, and 32:4. 2008), available online.

The Role of NGOs in Reconciliation

Hideko Nakamura (Japanese for Peace)

While reconciliation on an official level seems to take time and face opposition from conservatives in Japan, various NGOs have attempted to raise issues around the theme of reconciliation by working with survivors from the atrocities the Japanese Imperial Army inflicted during World War II. This paper illustrates how such attempts have been carried out by looking at some NGOs, including a group based in Melbourne called Japanese for Peace (JfP). This group recently organised a forum on reconciliation in the light of Japan’s war responsibility. The guest speakers at the forum have diverse cultural backgrounds: Australian, Korean, Japanese and American. Through the forum participants learnt who became war victims due to Japan’s aggression and their painful experiences: ex-POWs, survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery system and Hibakusha, including Korean Hibakusha. At this forum an ex-POW met a third generation Hibakusha and they exchanged their feelings with tears at the forum. The forum achieved a small step to reconciliation between some individuals and groups. Similarly well-established NGOs such as VAWW-Net Japan play a significant role in promoting reconciliation by networking with overseas women’s groups. The paper also refers to works of other NGOs to shed light on their efforts in the area of war responsibility and reconciliation.

Day Two (2^nd July)

Reconciliation on the Silver Screen: Preliminary Thoughts on the Second Sino-Japanese War in Chinese Cinema since 1950

Timothy Y. Tsu (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

This paper reflects on the changing narrative of the Second Sino-Japanese War in Chinese movie since 1950. It suggests that the evolution of the narrative of Chinese “war film” in the past half century may be summarized by the tropes of “demon,” “family” and “lover,” with each representing a stage of development.

The portrayal of the Japanese soldier as “demon” (guizi) is central to what I call the “classical socialist war narrative,” which predominated in the combat movies of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s. Such movies represent the war in the Manichean terms of a “resistance war” (kangzhan), i.e., right vs. wrong, oppression vs. resistance, rapacity vs. discipline, treachery vs. loyalty. Chinese communist heroes and heroines are pure and upright while Japanese murderers and their Chinese collaborators are despicable and incorrigible. In these movies the good characters never waver just as the bad ones never hesitate or regret.
The end of the Cultural Revolution (1976) and subsequent Sino-Japanese rapprochement (1978) led to the appearance of a group of somber movies examining the impact of the war on ordinary, non-combat, non-revolutionary people. They focus on the hardship of Sino-Japanese families during and after the war: families of Chinese foster parents and Japanese “orphans” and families of Chinese-Japanese couples, their children, and their in-laws. These movies make use of family and kinship to make the point that the “ordinary” people of China and Japan both suffered and that both countries are now ready to reconcile. Blood tie (as opposed to bloodshed) is deployed to (re)connect the two peoples, who in the classical socialist war narrative are not allowed to bond or make peace at all.
Few movies yet employ the trope of the romantic love (with sex) as a perspective on the war, but the two that will be discussed in this paper make use of romantic liaison between Chinese and Japanese agents to create a profound sense of moral ambiguity by entangling love with war. Chinese and Japanese/Chinese collaborator lovers find themselves attracted to or propelled toward each other even as they are obliged by duty to scheme against and undermine each other. The enemy is as lethal and cunning as he/she is seductive and irresistible. As the battle-line blurs on the individual front, so does the morality of the war.
The classical socialist war narrative remains popular today as is evident from the number of combat movies continued to be produced. But a number of war movies since the early 1980s have chipped away at this master narrative. These portray heroes and heroines who are no longer flawless, love that is no longer exclusively for the party but can be directed to the opposite sex, and Chinese soldiers not necessarily involved in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. At the same time, the Japanese soldier acquires individuality and some humanity. Whereas many still fit the militarist stereotype, there is now the occasional aggressor who possesses a gentle and humorous side or experiences angst and disorientation.

Chinese movies have been searching for new angles on the war since the late 1970s. Chinese directors, actors and actresses, studios, the state bureaucracy, and the audience may be said to be engaged in a collective though uncoordinated reflection on the meaning of the single most important event between their country and Japan in modern times. New voices, images, and narratives have emerged to challenge the dichotomies undergirding the old war narrative. Inasmuch as such movies seek to move beyond a Manichean view of the war, they help to create opportunities for dialogue and mutual accommodation between two former foes who are still uneasy partners at best.

Art, Photography and Remembering Hiroshima

Morris Low (University of Queensland)

This paper examines the role of images in the construction of memories of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. While many visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum are too young to remember the war themselves, the institution is important in the production of a national identity and narrative linked to victimhood which is transmitted to all those who visit. In contemplating possibilities for future reconciliation in Northeast Asia, we need to pay attention to how artists can subtly recontextualise the memories and artefacts that are housed within museum walls, casting objects in a new light and creating a space for different interpretations and narratives. Contemporary art and photography can play a significant role in helping the Japanese to reinterpret the past in new and interesting ways that have sometimes met with controversy. Artists to be discussed will include Hiromi Tsuchida, Miyako Ishiuchi, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Chim Pom.

The Cheju Massacre: Adaptation and Survival in Kim Sok Pom’s

The Death of the Crow (1957)

Elise Foxworth (Monash University)

In his 1957 spy story, The Death of the Crow, Japan-based Korean writer Kim Sok Pom offers a model of a ‘postcolonial literature of renascence’ that celebrates the emergence of the third world personality from the privations of history and endorses adaptation and survival in post war Korea and postcolonial Japan. Set just after the little-known 1948 Cheju Massacre, on the southern Korean island of Cheju, Kim uses the trope of the spy to depict the existential dilemma of the individual caught between the antithetical forces of Japanese colonialism and modernity on the one hand, and the force of Korean nationalism and tradition on the other. One of Kim’s central objectives is to articulate the complexities inherent to ‘being’ a diasporic Korean caught between conflicting Japanese and Korean identity positions and the ruptures that inevitably attend such an existence. Specifically Kim Sok Pom shows how the Massacre forced Korean exiles to Japan to reinvent themselves. While adversity and the breakdown of the old order caused identity fragmentation Kim shows it also offered the individual the possibility of new beginnings. This paper traces the way Kim subtly demonstrates how one can capitalize on both the past and the present to facilitate transformation and adaptation. He advocates remembering the past, but not letting it dictate the direction one’s life might take; the past must be taken into account because it informs the present, but our future agency is pivotal.

Remembering the Unfinished Conflict: Museums and the Contested Memory of the Korean War

Tessa Morris-Suzuki (Australian National University)

In English-language writings, the Korean War has often been called the “forgotten war”. For people in Korea itself, however, the war is far from forgotten and is, in a sense, still continuing, since no peace treaty was ever signed. Radically contrasting understandings of the nature, origins and meaning of the Korean War continue to cast their shadow over contemporary politics on the Korean Peninsula. Focusing mainly on the Memorial to the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in the Chinese city of Dandong, the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul and the Korean War exhibit in the Australian National Museum, this paper explores the role hat museums and memorials play in representing and creating the still-divided memories of the Korean War.

Day Three (3^rd July)

Korea at the Centre: Historiographical conflicts and reconciliation in East Asia

Leonid A. Petrov (Australian National University)

Due to its central geographic position and nationalistic cultural policies, Korea (both North and South) is entangled in several territorial, historiographical and cultural heritage disputes with its neighbours. The legacy of colonialism, the unfinished Cold War, and the ongoing nuclear confrontation have turned Korea into the hub of regional conflicts. What helps Korea to successfully pursue its national interests, though, is its favourable location and strategic alliances. Although the genuine reasons for confrontation with China and Japan are economic competition and security concerns, to achieve the long-needed reconciliation and to advance regionalism the unresolved issues of common history should be properly addressed and closed.

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Public Lecture

Date: 30^th July (Tuesday) 3:00-4:30
Venue:Lecture Theatre 1.04
Ground Floor, HC Coombs Extension Building, ANU, Canberra

RUSSIA IN NORTHEAST ASIA:

THE KOREA CRISIS CHALLENGE

Dr. Georgy D. Toloraya

Institute of Economy of the Russian Academy of Sciences

In recent years Russia, encouraged by its oil and gas boom, has tried to increase its influence in its Northeast Asian “backyard”. By developing a strategic partnership with China, exerting efforts to sooth the rift with Japan, and developing its energy potential, it has explored ways to establish a regional peace and security architecture. In this regard, especial attention has been given to the Korean peninsula. Russia wants the nuclear problem on the Korean peninsula to be solved diplomatically, on a multilateral basis, taking into consideration the interests of all the parties.

The future of the diplomatic process in NEA depends largely on overcoming mistrust and normalising the relations between North Korea (DPRK) and the West. The five parties and international bodies, such as the UN, must guarantee North Korean security and developmental aid. For that, a “strategic decision” on coexistence with the DPRK should be taken in Washington, to be followed by South Korea and Japan. Only then will there be a real possibility of North Korea eventually abandoning its ‘‘nuclear deterrent’’ and decreasing its excessive military potential. As the U.S. role in this process remains crucial, the Obama administration can only benefit from Russia’s support.

Download the Public Lecture flier (PDF file) here…

WORKSHOP ABSTRACTS

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Asia Beyond Conflict

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