National Subjectivity and the uses of Atonement in the Age of Recession

Deeply rooted in the culture of Japan's recession of the 1990s are insistent issues of Japanese war responsibility and compensation, some of which stem from atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre of 1937 and sexual slavery connected with the so-called comfort stations operated by the Japanese military during the Asia Pacific War. Centrally at issue in most of these cases are demands for Japanese apology and compensation. In the course of the decade, significant connections have emerged between issues of war guilt and the question of Japanese nationalism. These are manifest especially in what has come to be called the debate on the historical subject (rekishi shutai ronso), which was touched off by literary critic Kato Norihiro's publication in January 1995 of an essay titled "Haisengoron" [Since defeat], and whose various manifestations continue to the present. ¹ Others have already written in English about this essay and the ensuing controversy. ² My focus will be on Kato's argument that in order to offer an authentic apology for the 20 million (non-Japanese) Asian victims of the Pacific War, it is first necessary to form a national subject (kokumin shutai) via the process of mourning the 3 million Japanese war dead. This formulation raises important questions regarding the elements and dynamics of apology. ³ It calls to mind a genealogy of similar arguments in the past, as social reformers and political leaders have repeatedly announced the need to construct a subject, often via something like what Sheldon Garon has called campaigns of "moral suasion" (kyoka), and also raises issues related to the logic of politics and the dialectics of otherness. ⁴ Most important, Kato's argument suggests that in the recession era in Japan even the perceived need to apologize to other Asians for Japanese aggression and atrocities can be appropriated as the pretext for national mobilization. Arguments like Kato's appear to reveal deepset concern among intellectuals and other elites regarding a perceived decline in national power and prestige as a result of the 1990s recession and, in a longer-range and more pragmatic vein, can be understood as efforts to "settle accounts" with Asia on the issue of war guilt as a necessary step toward cultivating a more "ordinary" military as well as political and economic role for Japan in international affairs.

* * *

To guage the full impact on the Japanese public of the decade's repeated revelations and demands for apology, they need to be framed against the background of a plethora of other disasters, incidents, and embarrassments that have occurred since the death of the Showa emperor. In regard to the sexual slavery issue, for example, activism among Korean and Japanese women against commercial sex tours to Korea (the so-called kisaeng kanko) in the 1970s and 1980s was gradually expanded to include the issue of the wartime "comfort stations," so that when the Japanese emperor died in 1989, demonstrations were held in Korea against the sending of an official Korean delegation to the funeral. During South Korean president Roh Tae Wu's visit to Japan in May 1990, the new Japanese emperor, Akihito, expressed "intense sorrow" for wrongs inflicted on Korea, and Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki added his version of an apology on that occasion as well. Then, in June 1990, the Korean Comfort Women Problem Resolution Council—also known as the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Teitaikyo)—issued six demands to the Japanese government, the centerpiece of which was public apology, supported by acknowledgment of all the facts, full disclosure, a memorial for the victims, compensation, and incorporation into historical education. ⁵

Meanwhile, Japanese stock prices fell in February 1990, soon after the general election, and then a major plunge began. Newspapers filled with reports of securities scams perpetrated by major brokerage houses, and suspicion was soon directed at not...