Reassuring and Unnerving Japan } 713
reassuring approach. From beginning to end, Jiang bludgeoned his Japanese
guests with the history issue.
In October 1998, the month before Jiang’s visit to China, South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung had visited Japan and secured a written apology
from Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi for Japan’s brutal 1905–1945 colonial
rule of Korea, in exchange for a South Korean promise not to raise the issue
again.^11 In the Obuchi-Kim communiqué, Japan “in a spirit of humility”
expressed “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” for “tremendous damage
and suffering” caused by Japan’s colonial rule of Korea. The wording that
was eventually used in the Jiang-Obuchi joint declaration, on the other
hand, said Japan was “keenly conscious of serious distress and damages”
and “expresses deep remorse for this.” The key difference in the two for-
mulations was use of the word “apology” in the Tokyo-Seoul joint decla-
ration. In negotiations prior to Jiang’s visit, Beijing demanded a written
apology from Tokyo of a strength equivalent to that the Kim-Obuchi
statement. Japan offered only a more equivocal expression of “remorseful
repentance.” No agreement had been reached when Jiang departed for
Japan. In August 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of World War II’s end,
an earlier Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, had issued a
written statement expressing “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” for
the sufffering caused to Asian peoples by Japan’s history of colonial rule
and aggression—the same phrasing used in the Kim-Obuchi declaration.
Tokyo was unwilling to satisfy Beijing’s demand that it “apologize” again
and, perhaps, again.
Jiang could have taken what Tokyo was willing to offer on the history
issue and moved on to areas of agreement and expanded cooperation. He
chose not to. Instead, Jiang dwelled on the history issue throughout his
visit. Upon arrival in Japan, Jiang declared in his initial statement that it
was necessary to “seriously summarize the experience of the history of
China-Japan relations” in order to guide the future development of ties.^12
In other words, there was a danger that Japan might again take a path of
aggression. In negotiations over the apology issue, the Japanese side pro-
posed a compromise. Obuchi would deliver an oral “apology” during his
formal summit meeting with Jiang, Tokyo proposed, but the printed joint
statement would mention only “remorse.” After considerable wrangling,
the Chinese side agreed to this arrangement. But after Obuchi delivered
the agreed-upon oral apology, Jiang held forth with a twenty-five-minute
lecture on the history issue. He disagreed, Jiang said disingenuously, with
the “prevailing Japanese view” that there is “no more need to talk about
the history issue between the two countries.” As Figure 26-3 indicates,
Japan’s leaders had “talked about” the history issue a number of times
by November 1998. The Chinese side also found Obuchi’s oral statement
inadequate. Obuchi had used the Japanese word owabi (equivalent to dao