Australia-Japan Relations: No Hostage to War Memory
2 years, 2 months ago

Australia-Japan Relations: No Hostage to War Memory

The Diplomat  

One of the most emblematic photographs related to Japanese World War II atrocities against Australians shows the post-war interrogation of Military Police Sergeant Hosotani Naoji near Sandakan, northeast Borneo, in October 1945. Australia’s World War I Prime Minister Billy Hughes alluded to Japan – then a wartime ally – in declaring the conflict in Europe to be a struggle for White Australia. Diversified war memory, the attrition of anti-Japanese resentment, and economic and strategic interests in East Asia all underwrite the current bipartisan pragmatism in Australia’s relations with Japan. Can states whose relations with Japan are burdened by fraught colonial and war memory politics – such as South Korea – learn from the foreign policy pragmatism of peer Asia-Pacific nations like Australia? South Korea’s Japanese foreign policy largely remains hostage to culture wars between right- and left-wing Korean constituencies over the colonial and post-colonial past, waged with far greater intensity than Australia’s own “history wars.” South Korean governments still lack the political capital to prioritize foreign policy pragmatism over a powerful anti-Japanese nationalism, though changing East Asian geopolitics may incentivize a resolution to that impasse.

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