to death in the Chinese city of Xi’an.
Li wasn’t even Japanese – he just
happened to be driving a Japanese car.
While researching my new book, I
spent time at a demonstration outside the
Japanese embassy in Seoul. This protest,
which has taken place every Wednesday
since 1992, calls for a sincere official
apology and reparations for the sexual
enslavement of women by the Japanese
military during the Second World War.
The resentment is reciprocated, at
least by a minorit y in Japan. In Yoko-
hama, I encountered a convoy of black
minivans carrying loudspeakers that
spewed a tirade of anti-Korean invective.
For many years, various right-wing fac-
tions have taken to the streets to threaten
and insult ethnic communities in Japan’s
cities, particularly Osaka, home to the
country’s largest Korean population.
Most see the animosity of the Chi-
nese and the Koreans towards Japan as
rooted in the latter’s colonial expan-
sionism, which began in 1876 with the
imposition of an unequal trade treaty
on Korea. The Chinese got involved but
were defeated in the First Sino-Japanese
War in 1895. Japan then annexed Koreaarmed ‘black ships’ to demand that Japan
allow American vessels access to its ports.
This ignited already simmering unrest in
Japan, leading to a small scale revolution- the so-called Meiji Restoration – and
the country’s subsequent militarisation.
Indeed, at the Tokyo War Crimes Tri-
bunal in 1946, General Kanji Ishiwara,
who had been in charge of the 1931 inva-
sion of China, referred to that incident.
“Haven’t you heard of Perry?” he asked
an American prosecutor. “[Japan] took
your country as its teacher, and set about
learning how to be aggressive.”
So, if playing the historical blame
game, America would appear to be a
prime culprit for the current situation,
particularly if we consider its often
controversial post-Second World War
involvement in Japan, Korea and Tai-
wan. At least, that’s what I thought at the
start of my research, as I stood beside the
memorial to Perry at Kurihama. Later,
in China, I discovered that a different
western imperial power is blamed for
that country’s 20th ‘century of shame’:
Britain. Which set me thinking that if
the British had not destabilised the Qing
dynasty with an illegal opium trade in Æ
We are told that
this will be the
Asian century...
But many also
believe a Third
World War could
begin in east Asia
entirely in 1910, edged its way into
north-east China in 1931, and ex-
panded south through Manchuria and
along the eastern coast to Hong Kong
and beyond. Shortly before attacking
Hong Kong in 1941, Japan raided Pearl
Harbor, bringing the United States
into the conflict – ironic, since Japan’s
imperial ambitions had been inspired by
American gunboat diplomacy.
In July 1853, US Commodore Mat-
thew Perry arrived at Kurihama, near the
entrance to Tokyo Bay, with four heavilyGE
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GE
S
Protesters in Hong Kong
burn banners in 2012
after Japan nationalised
the Senkaku Islands,
which are also claimed
by China