Popular Culture Co-production and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia

9. Regionalism and National Dis-integration: Li Ying’s Yasukuni and the Co-creation of East Asia

Regionalism and National Dis-integration 171 171 CHAPTER 9 Regionalism and National Dis-integration: Li Ying’s Yasukuni and the Co-creation of East Asia Rob Efird As in postwar Europe, the future of regionalism and regionalization in East Asia are linked to the progress of historical reconciliation, and the ability and willingness of East Asians to think, act, and feel beyond the narrow confines of cultural nationalism. While academic analyses of Asian regionalism often dwell upon the role of transnational institutions, trade, financial flows, and popular culture, they tend to overlook the transformative potential of intraregional migrants and their ability to simultaneously dissolve the fictions of ethnic homogeneity while constituting new solidarities across national lines. To the mechanisms of “region-making” enumerated in this book’s Introduction, we should also add the impact of individuals who hail from one area of Asia but produce primarily for another. Transnational producers create a region in a way that distinctly differs from the effects of transnational financing, for the obvious reason that it is not simply money but mutually intelligible and compelling experiences that knit separate nations and national histories into a shared regional fabric. In this essay I consider the present and possible roles of recent Chinese migrants to Japan who shape regional discussions of cultural membership and wartime suffering. In many East Asian societies — including Japan — contemporary national sentiment is tied to memorializations of collective suffering during the past war. In his classic essay on nationalism, Ernest Renan observed that memories of suffering are a powerful catalyst for nationalist sentiment , and politicians in Japan, China, Korea, and other Asian nations have sought to mobilize wartime trauma and loss for political purposes. 172 Rob Efird But the nationalisms that are built on such memories are clearly at odds with regional integration, particularly since national identification is typically accompanied by a conviction about one’s profound difference from members of other national groups (who are often viewed negatively). Sino-Japanese relations are an example of this dynamic, as wartime suffering is repeatedly invoked by politicians of both nations to forge internal solidarity. Conflicts over the war’s legacy are often phrased in monolithic terms such as “we Japanese” and “the feelings of the Chinese people” that substitute an illusory unity for the actual variations in experience , opinion, and cultural identification that exist within both Japan and China. It follows, therefore, that the recognition and documentation of growing socio-cultural diversity within each nation may work to disintegrate these national fictions and lay the foundations for transnational solidarity. In 2008, two developments in Japan hinted at the potential of social diversity and its documentation: the debate over Yasukuni (2007), the controversial Japanese documentary by Japan-resident Chinese director Li Ying, and the announcement by Japan’s Ministry of Justice that resident Chinese had, for the first time, become Japan’s largest foreign cultural minority. Each development testified to the ongoing diversification of Japanese society and indicated the potential for dialogue and solidarity across East Asian national boundaries, despite the enduring strength of cultural prejudice. The documentary Yasukuni exemplifies the potential for transnational collaboration as well as conflict in East Asia. Drawing upon his twenty years of residence in Japan and a decade’s experience filming Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, Li focuses upon the meanings of the shrine by documenting the words and actions of a wide variety of people there, particularly those visiting the shrine on 15 August, the date of Japan’s surrender in World War II. Amidst intimidation by right-wing extremists and the vociferous criticism of conservative Japanese politicians, five theaters in Japan (four in Tokyo and one in Osaka) cancelled their planned screenings of the film, prompting a wide variety of Japanese individuals, civic groups, media representatives and others to proclaim their support for the film’s showing. In contrast to the furor around Li’s documentary, the Japanese Ministry of Justice’s announcement concerning the number of resident Chinese elicited barely a whisper in the public’s response. After all, Chinese migration to Japan had been growing for two decades. Barring any dramatic change in China’s and Japan’s demographic, economic, and Regionalism and National Dis-integration 173 geographic circumstances, a projected need for migrant labor and consequent easing of Japanese immigration policy means that this trend in...