CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER
APRIL 16, 2014
Jochen Bittner
TOKYO — Imagine a postwar Germany that had never managed to become friends with its neighboring countries. Imagine a Germany that, despite all the remorse it had shown for its belligerence during World War II, had been excluded from the European Union. Imagine, even, that this Germany had been excluded from NATO, because it had forever been denied the right to engage in a defense alliance.
On top of all of this, imagine the following: Your economy is in decline; a mighty, nondemocratic neighbor is increasing military spending while denouncing you as an aggressive, militaristic nation, even as it and other nearby countries are grabbing parts of your territory.
If it’s hard to imagine such a scenario, just hop on a plane to Japan.
The comparison with my own country is certainly a compassionate reading of the new, assertive tone that Japan’s government has adopted toward its neighbors. It’s hard not to sympathize after speaking with the many Japanese officials I’ve met here, who say they have just one wish: that Japan, almost 70 years after the end of World War II, could become a “normal country” like Germany.
Normal? At first the idea sounds humble, understandable. But “normal” is a tricky concept: No country is truly “normal,” even boring old Germany. And this desire comes at a time when being normal — including the right to militarize — may contribute to the spiral of mistrust underway among the major players in East Asia.
My conversations with Japanese officials and observers persuaded me that, for all the differences between the countries, there are instructive parallels between Germany’s experience and Japan’s current position — above all, that normalcy is not something that is granted; it must be sought out and earned.
Of course, there are good reasons that Germany and Japan followed divergent courses after the war. Japan has obviously had greater problems with coming to terms with its past: A foreign affairs official in Tokyo frankly told me the Japanese public was experiencing “apology fatigue” — something most Germans would never admit to, even if they felt it.
This is partly understandable. China is an undemocratic neighbor that has never seriously been interested in reconciliation; on the contrary, it uses Japan’s guilty past — the massacre at Nanjing, the widespread enslavement of “comfort women” — to stir up its own neo-nationalism.
And then there is the simple fact of geography: Japan is an island nation, Germany has land borders with nine countries. You cannot take the train from Tokyo to Seoul as you can from Cologne to Paris.
The lack of strong cultural interaction is a problem, too: There has not been anything like the real-life social network of the Erasmus student exchange program for the Pacific region.
But for those precise reasons, if long-term peace is to be achieved, then someone has to take the lead on regional reconciliation. And there is no one more obliged than Japan to take on that burden.
Here is where the Germany parallel becomes instructive. Nobody expects Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to kneel before the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in atonement, the way Chancellor Willy Brandt of Germany did before the Ghetto Uprising Memorial in Warsaw. But as Germany learned in its coming to terms with the past, the famed “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” strong symbols are sometimes more helpful than facts.
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While some Japanese scholars may be correct to say that Chinese propaganda inflates the numbers of victims of Nanjing, the easiest way to unwind its effect would be to make an impressive, lasting statement of guilt. Germany has been accepted as a full and fairly normal member of the international community not least because of the persistence with which it has remembered the Nazi atrocities.
Another lesson from Germany: Withstand the temptation to blame others, even if you see good grounds for it. When I asked a Japanese official why his government didn’t react to the proposal of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea to set up a committee for jointly developing history schoolbooks, after the Franco-German model, he said Tokyo had “not received any proposal from the Korean government in relation to this issue.” If Germany had waited for a written invitation for reconciliation from France or Poland, my generation would probably still believe that we were surrounded by hereditary enemies.
Reconciliation takes bravery as well as generosity. And you must want it. Without it, a country’s path to “normality” — perhaps best defined as earning and enjoying the trust of its neighbors — remains blocked. Reconciliation pays off, and a new normality is the reward.
The opposite, creating boogeymen and playing blame games, happened in Europe in 1914. Does East Asia really want to go sleepwalking down that path a hundred years later? Japan, more than any of its neighbors, has the obligation, with a gesture to its neighbors, to prevent that. Perhaps the best way to prove you are a normal country is to hold your nerve when things get rough.
Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 17, 2014, in The International New York Times. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
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