INTERVIEW/ Kazuo Ogura: People, not events, shaped modern history

The following are excerpts from an interview with Kazuo Ogura, president of the Japan Foundation, about his choice of the 10 biggest incidents in modern and contemporary history in East Asia. This interview is part of a series to complement the "Impact of History--150 Years in East Asia."

***

The 10 biggest incidents I chose in chronological order are:

1. The Sepoy Mutiny in 1857

2. The Meiji Restoration in 1868

3. The Tripartite Intervention in 1895

4. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

5. Assassination of Hirobumi Ito by a Korean, Ahn Choong Kun, in 1909.

6. Chinese revolutions from the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 to the Chinese Communist Party's rise to power in 1949 and the Russian October Revolution in 1917

7. Assassination of Chang Tso-lin in 1928

8. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937

9. Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945

10. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations

I picked the 10 biggest incidents from the viewpoint that people shaped modern and contemporary history. I also include ones that occurred outside East Asia that had a major impact on the region.

Perceptions of history naturally differ by country and person. Whether Napoleon Bonaparte is considered an invader or not obviously depends on if the observer is Russian or French. The problem is that young Japanese people have no interest in history and do not know much about it before discussing perceptions of history.

Ignorance leads to prejudice, creating misunderstandings among people.

I put the Sepoy Mutiny in India (also known as the Indian Rebellion) at the top of my list. This represents resistance to British colonial rule. This first major anti-colonial rebellion by Asian people influenced the rest of East Asia. The movement adversely led to the direct control of India by the British government, affecting Indian defense, advancement into China, and overall Asian policies.

The Meiji Restoration offered a model for modernization in Asia. Presenting the imperial family at the head as authority figures, the Japanese government avoided major civil wars and accomplished a major revolution. It also encouraged Chinese modernization.

After winning the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan faced the Tripartite Intervention. It was a diplomatic intervention by Russia, Germany and France over the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed between Japan and Qing dynasty China, which ended the First Sino-Japanese War.

The Japanese public supported an imperialistic foreign policy as shown by the proverb "struggling against difficulties for vengeance," and both the general public and the government became sensitive to the "Yellow Peril" scare. The Japanese government realized that the nation could not survive in the international community unless it cooperated with major European nations, and later signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Japan learned the importance of public information and propaganda in foreign relations for the first time in the Russo-Japanese War, and increased its awareness of how important a role journalism plays and how crucial it is to gain public support. Japan's "political maneuvers" supporting anti-czar movements in Poland, Finland and the Russian Empire were the first attempt at public diplomacy.

The assassination of Hirobumi Ito became the perfect excuse for Japan to keep Korea under its rule. If a nationalist movement is cornered, leading to terrorist attacks, that gives a good excuse to the party that clamps down on such activities, and the movement may suffer a setback. This is something that we should think about in relation to current attacks in the Middle East.

The Xinhai Revolution was the starting point of the revolutionary movement in China, and it led to the communist revolution of Mao Tse-tung. The communist revolution in Russia created an ideological reverberation around the world. If there were no propaganda touting the "threat" in communism, Fascism and Nazism would not have won public support.

The revolutions in those countries were one of the factors that directly brought ideological antagonism into 20th century international politics.

Chang Tso-lin was murdered in a conspiracy by the Japanese Kwantung Army, and both the Japanese army and the government did not pursue their responsibilities and weakened military discipline. The military lost internal control and distanced itself from the public at the same time. Following the incident, Japan entered a sharp conflict with China.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident spread the Chinese civil war outside its national boundaries, throwing the Second Sino-Japanese War into a quagmire. Japan completely turned Chinese public opinion against Tokyo.

The historical significance of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan has not been settled. A majority of the Japanese public believes that the country should not be armed with nuclear weapons and nuclear arms should be eliminated.

The United States has not offered any apology for dropping the atomic bombs. Moreover, Japan has an alliance with a nuclear power. Japanese may need go back to the original root and consider how serious they think this contradiction is as a problem from a moral standpoint, if not from strategic considerations.

Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations spread not just to Japan and the rest of East Asia, but also the United States, Europe, South America and other areas. Neither the United States nor Hanoi won the war, and the true winners were people around the world who stood up against a war of aggression.

* * *

Born in 1938, Kazuo Ogura has been Japanese ambassador to Vietnam, South Korea and France. He currently teaches Japanese diplomacy and comparative culture at Aoyama Gakuin University as a special visiting professor.(IHT/Asahi: March 29,2008)