Japan And China's Saving Face/Insulting Each Other Games

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The US public and goverment leaders have no clue as to how 'losing face' works. Watching China and Japan's actions and reactions to each other's insults and sneaky ways of trying to make the other party 'lose face' is interesting and instructive. We better stop being blind to all this and take it more seriously.

From the Economist:

Mr Abe's men say his travels paint an emerging vision: while the alliance with America remains the cornerstone of Japan's security policy, Mr Abe is also pushing once-passive Japan to pursue its own, more muscular course. For in Asia, says an official, Japan is playing “a huge great game” in which it must compete with a rising China and a newly confident Russia for resources, power and prestige.

His first trip as prime minister to meet Mr Bush was overshadowed by Mr Abe's comments, in March, questioning the Japanese army's wartime role in forcing women into military brothels (see article). Howls of international protest forced him into a sort-of apology. He repeated it to Mr Bush, who “accepted” it—as if the president spoke for the victims. This choreographed pas de deux prevented the issue overwhelming all others.

Mr Bush warmly approves of Mr Abe's fence-mending with neighbours who had been antagonised by Mr Koizumi's provocative visits to Yasukuni, Tokyo's war shrine. America needs Chinese co-operation, even leadership, in dealing with a North Korea that went nuclear last October. And in the longer run, it wants to tie China in as a “responsible stakeholder” of the international system. Neither goal is served if Japan riles its neighbours with high-handedness over its wartime past.

Since WWII, Japan has honed the fine art of the totally insincere apology. This works wonderfully with the US public and government. 'So sorry, hahaha,' is the classic attitude. These little tests are run under our noses as a way to gage how weak we are and to see if they can pull off stunts like undermining our economic base without us reacting violently. Viewing us as a drunken bully, they artfully lead us around by our noses.

The one thing that Japan is most intent on is resetting WWII: honoring their own war leaders while smearing contempt over our victory. They grow bolder and bolder in this game as we ignore their obvious insults. The American media which howls with rage when anyone talks about the Holocaust outside of the official mantra, ignores Japanese insults and rewriting of history. When China and Korea began a long battle with the Japanese over their official history text books, the American media made it look as if the victims of Japanese aggression during WWII were a bunch of fools and petty nincompoops for arguing over such a 'trivial' matter.

The Japanese cheerfully hold ceremonies around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are propaganda moments which they use to make themselves the victims of WWII. The bombing of civilians in this fashion was criminal. Turning civilians into frontline war targets is a crime all military leaders committed during WWII and beyond. WWIII will focus entirely on annihilating as many civilans in cities as possible.

But WWII was launched by Germany and Japan seeking economic domination and enslaving neighbors as a means of fixing the Great Depression's economic effects. And looting weak, third world nations is OK if one is an European empire but both Germany and Japan decided to attack the British Empire and that is not OK.

Actually, all parties involved in writing the history of WWII are really transmitting propaganda. Text books are designed to encourage patriotism and love of one's home country and WWII, the bloodiest, ugliest war in human history, has to be transformed into some great moral victory of some sort. Japan to this day, cannot understand they were criminals during WWII because they invaded Korea and then China and tried to act like Britain and force those countries into serving Japan.

Britain likes to think they were spreading freedom and democracy when they enslaved billions of people. To this day, they cannot face the facts of their crimes and they pretend WWI and WWII were all about Japan and Germany attacking ONLY Britain and not them trying to devour the illegal and amoral British empire.

It is time for all countries to really discuss WWII honestly. This discussion will be hair-raising because of course, the victims of European and Japanese imperialism will have a lot to say that no one at this end wants to hear and this impacts the American empire which is superceding the British empire. This week, our own leader made happy talk with the Queen of England who acts as if this is her colony. Which it is, really.

We shoulder nearly the entire cost and duty of the British empire while gaining nothing but a mountain of debts. And this mountain's bulk is from Asia. Japan's fiscal policies are directly hurting us and we can't do a thing about it because it is the basis of our own economy. Because we need those stupid, dangerous .5% loans from Japan, we can't say anything to them about anything anymore. The Japanese test us on this by maliciously and deliberately insulting us over WWII then they stand back and laugh as we agree with them and scold their former victims. How dare China and Korea complain about Japan rewriting history and praying at the Yakusuni shrine?

From Xinhua:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an offering to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in late April to mark its spring festival, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday.

The report said Abe offered a potted masakaki tree labeled with the words "prime minister" for Yasukuni's spring festival, held on April 21-23.

The cost of the plant, some 50,000 yen (417 U.S. dollars), was paid by Abe "out of his own pocket," the report said.

China responded the issue by urging Japan to strictly abide by the consensus reached between the two countries on removing political obstacles in bilateral relations.

The new prime minister, Abe, trotted off to China to display his friendliness. His own country has refused to pay for their WWII crimes unlike Germany. He let slip his contempt for victims of Japanese aggression with the 'comfort women' insults. China and Korea are insisting Japan not only apologize for all that but pay reparations. To this day, the government of Japan refuses. For this would mean they lose face.

And being contemptuous of their neighbors, they don't feel they must kow tow to them on any matter, big or small. They stand triumphant upon the back of the USA who kneels before Japan, begging favors. This has emboldened them. This is why Abe promised China he would not visit the shrine in question but then turned around and sent an important gift/message: he supports the shrine dedicated to Japanese war criminals!

So, China understands this game and of course is now hammering Japan over this seemingly trivial matter. But it is NOT trivial at all! It goes to the heart of WWII and who won and what was won and who will rule Asia in the future. The Japanese need the USA in order to counterbalance China but they can't resist destroying the USA because this is revenge for WWII's bombings of civilians.

Germany won WWII against Russia, Britain and the USA but they show much greater diplomatic finesse in this matter and are not making fun of any of these countries or insulting them directly. But for some reason, Japan, playing the eternal 'face saving/insulting' game have overstepped their bounds and are exposed to scrutiny. We see behind the smiling face and bows, the snarling imperialist waiting to pounce.

Why America ignores this doesn't baffle me. We are beggars at the gates of the rich and powerful. We are turning our military into a mercenary machine that others can buy and use. We need endless loans to pay for our reckless spending and so we accept the slaps and sneers of the Japanese rulers who kick dirt in our faces and then laughs at us.

But when they turn around and do this to China, they are shocked that China slaps back. And the USA seems emotionally and intellectually unable to deal with either China or Japan because we think both want to be our friends. Instead of demanding dignity and courtesy, our own ruler, Bush, has tried the 'insult' game on China at Japan's urging. This is why he backs the imperialist Japanese every time they insult us and China over WWII. This causes the Japanese to feel more and more contempt and ditto China. An empire needs to keep this under control. Letting everyone insult us is stupid and this loss of face is a major defeat that translates into defeats in the economic sphere as well as military.

This is also why our wars in Muslim lands is dangerous: everyone can see we are a paper tiger who needs nuclear bombs to intimidate people because we are unable to 'save face' nearly anywhere at this point. And this is a classic sign of an empire that is rotting.

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Comments

[JSmith]

"The Japanese cheerfully hold ceremonies around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are propaganda moments which they use to make themselves the victims of WWII."

And the Germans get all weepy over Dresden.

(I don't buy their bullshit any more than I buy Japan's.)

[ramon3579]

"Germany won WWII against Russia, Britain and the USA but they show much greater diplomatic finesse in this matter and are not making fun of any of these countries or insulting them directly."

Please do explain what you mean by this. They lost the military part, didn't they?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

There are two fronts in a war: economic and military.

Japan and Germany surrendered on the military front but then switched to fighting us on the economic front. Note that Germany, in 1989, bought out the Soviet Union and got them to retreat from Eastern Europe.

Japan rules us. Get it? History isn't four years, it is long in tooth and beard.

[ramon3579]

Ok, I get you. But--naive question number two--didn't we set things up that way intentionally, after the war? Wasn't it FDR's plan to embrace them in a system that made economic competition more desirable than military competition? And that does seem like a good idea.

Also, maybe I'm uninformed about this, but Germany seems like the "good guys" these days, taking an almost pacifist stance on Iraq and so on.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Unlike the Japanese, the Germans faced their own demons. You don't see them going to a Hitler shrine and praying to the Nazis.

They want to make money. They want peace. Like China, they know they can make more working within countries rather than invading them. This is why the world's second biggest trade surplus is Germany at $145 billion. And unlike the foolish Japanese, they did this while making workers better off and a solid, good currency.

[windshield replacement]

This isn't quite the same as independently researching domestic car repair shops.