"April is the cruelest month," wrote British poet T.S. Eliot in "The Waste Land." April this year was indeed the cruelest month for the three nations of South Korea, Japan and China.

Anti-Japan demonstrations flared up in South Korea following the enactment of "Takeshima Day" by Shimane Prefecture. Furthermore, the Japanese government's reported approval of a new history textbook with more regressive contents only added fuel to the flames. The demonstrations were more aggressive than any others in recent years, and my impression was that the aggressiveness was second strongest behind that of the opposition demonstrations at the time of the talks for normalizing diplomatic relations in the 1960s.

In China, too, similar anti-Japanese demonstrations developed in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities.

I have been aware that perceptions of history are a minefield for bilateral relationships between South Korea and Japan and between China and Japan. When a conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was held in Osaka in 1995, the then South Korean President Kim Yong-sam and the then Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama held a bilateral summit and, based on an understanding similar to that outlined above, they agreed to develop ways of conducting joint historical studies. Ten years have elapsed since the joint studies began but, despite the efforts of scholars on both sides, we have still not seen any concrete results. That illustrates how difficult the problem is.

It must not be overlooked that the people of South Korea and China are determined not to forget the history of Japanese invasions of their countries and to keep that fact firmly in their minds. In the suburbs of the South Korean city of Cheonan, there is a facility known as the Independence Memorial Hall. The question of Japanese history textbooks led the South Korean government to establish the hall in the second half of the 1980s in order to throw light on the history of overcoming national difficulties. Among the exhibition halls is one for the Korean independence movement against imperialist Japan. The late vice president of the Japanese Liberal-Democratic Party, Shin Kanemaru, after visiting the memorial hall, reportedly commented that it should desirably be located in Tokyo.

In Tokyo, what could be regarded as a Japanese version of the war memorial hall, Yushukan, stands on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine. Personal belongings of suicide (kamikaze) squad members and student soldiers who died in World War II are among the articles displayed in the hall, which declares that "invaluable historical materials hand down the truth from generation to generation." This memorial hall does tell us of the "glory" of the wars the Japanese fought since the Meiji Restoration, but nothing can be found there about the tragedies and pains the neighboring countries experienced in the shadow of that "glory."

Many people say that it will not be easy for South Korea, Japan and China to achieve reconciliation over history but the latest incidents have made it clear that the matter cannot be left as it is even if it may be difficult to achieve reconciliation. Anyone who is open-mined will agree that the approach of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which was set up to correct the Japanese people's "self-tormenting views of history," will not contribute to the reconciliation we are seeking.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in a recent meeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Bandung conference, expressed deep regrets and an apology for Japan's past colonial rule and aggression. On the very same day, 80 Diet members, including current Cabinet members, paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine. For those people in neighboring countries who watched the visit on television, the prime minister's speech must have sounded extremely hollow. It should be remembered how many politicians have uttered words to negate the statements of reflection and apology by successive prime ministers as well as comments made by Emperors.

On the other hand, I believe that South Korea and China should grow out of an obsession with past history and seriously set to work on building future-oriented relationships. Particularly in this respect, I remember the Vietnamese government's Doi Moi renovation policy in the 1980s, when the memory of the war in Vietnam was still fresh in everybody's mind. I was deeply moved by the attitude the Vietnamese deliberately adopted at the time that they would "neither talk about, nor cling to, the past," and by the country's efforts to establish relationships with South Korea, a country it had once fought against.

According to recent public opinion surveys in South Korea, Japan and China, more than 50 percent of those polled in Japan and China said "possible" to the question of whether the history issue can be resolved and, in South Korea, 33 percent gave an affirmative reply to the same question (The Asahi Shimbun, April 27, 2005, morning edition). These three countries should keep in mind that there will be no genuine goodwill or friendship before overcoming this problem, and should work out a plan to that end from a long-range perspective.