China, Japan, the Islands, and a Really Crowded Memorial

For those unfamiliar with the great old comedic singer (and former Harvard mathematics professor) Tom Lehrer, here's one of my favorite of his songs, "National Brotherhood Week":

I think if Lehrer wanted to revist this song, and add a few updated verses, one of them might go like this:

Oh the Chinese hate the Japanese

And the Japanese hate the Chinese

They're both angry at the Taiwanese

And to the US, they're all just Asian

But during National Brotherhood Week

National Brotherhood Week

Watch Jackie Chan and Ichiro play some hide-and-seek

...and so on.

The Sino-Japanese conflict has roots deep-seeded in history.  The current complicated dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands (more on the names later) is just the most recent (though it has been going on for a long time) on a long list of geo-political, cultural, and economic tension between the two countries.  The First Sino-Japanese War in the 1890s brought to an international scale what was previously a regional conflict.  The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s, and the subsequent atrocities committed upon Chinese citizens over the course of Japanese occupation here still stings at the core of the proud Chinese national ego.  And then you have these islands.  I don't profess to be an expert on Sino-Japanese relations.  In fact, I know very little about it.  But having arrived here at the very peak of the tensions surrounding the islands, it has been impossible not to notice how the conflict has affected the individual Chinese, in addition to all of the external noise from the anti-Japanese demonstrations and the vehement stance taken by the various governments involved.  Beyond the politics and the extremists, the conflcit has had a noticeable impact on the silent majority here as well, bringing to the forefront the poweful, and inherently nationalist, anti-Japanese ethos that dates back to the 1930s and beyond.

By way of brief background, the islands are eight tiny specks of land in the East China Sea that lie in the middle of the triangle formed by Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China.  When I say tiny, I mean tiny -- the largest one is 4.5 square kilometers (slightly bigger than Central Park in Manhattan).  There is no evidence to suggest that any of the islands have ever been inhabited.  They are called the Senkaku Islands in Japanese, and the Diaoyu Islands in Mandarin.  Language, as always, is inherently political, and by choosing which title to give the islands one inherently, if not actively, gives currency to that side of the controversy.  (For example, Wikipedia uses "Senkaku" as the header for  this page on the dispute, and I think the article itself betrays a slight leaning toward the Japanese position).

The basis for the dispute itself is complicated and, for the purposes of this post, not entirely relevant.  For my money, deciding on the sovreign "ownership" of eight islands where nobody has ever lived is never going to be simple.  To make a very long story short, two things happened in the early 1970s: the United States terminated its post-WWII administration of Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands, and potential oil and gas reserves were thought to be found on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.  The result: a drawn out custody battle, with three potential parents.  The dispute has many subcurrents beneath the larger issue of Sino-Japanese relations.  The PRC's strained relationship with Taiwan, for example is a huge factor; the two governments have generally acted separately, and often at-odds, despite the fact that they essentially agree about the "correct" geopolitical position of the islands.

Chinese consternation surrounding the islands was piqued most recently, when the Japanese government formally purchased the islands from their private (Japanese) family owner, formally putting them under Japanese state control in September.  Or, at least, so argued the Japanese.  The Chinese have responded with consistent political jabs from both Beijing and Taipei.  The PRC has gone so far as to include the islands in its state-published meteorological report, as if reporting the weather equated to territorial control.  Much has been written, denouncing the Japanese position as categorically untrue, like this one, which, despite its headline, does little to convince me of anything.  And, perhaps most famously, anti-Japanese demonstrations have cropped up throughout the world (including some in the US), a few of which have turned violent.

Beneath all of this, there is a quiet rumbling, a reawakening of something that all Chinese -- not just the most extreme activists or most powerful politicians -- were reared to feel.  Since arriving here, I have noticed on several occasions a subtle yet powerful distrust of Japan.  The feeling isn't, fortunately, I think, directed specifically at Japanese people.  But there's something about the idea of Japan that seems to make the Chinese national blood boil, just a little bit.

So we return to this picture, of the scene outside the Nanjing Massacre Memorial on October 1, the Chinese National Day:

As I've whined several times here, the Chinese aren't known for their patience.  They push, honk, and ignore personal space, as long as it suits their interests in getting from point A to point B.  They frequently cut in line.  But in Nanjing at the memorial, everyone stood quietly, waiting their turn (which, for these folks, was probably at least 90 minutes away).  I didn't see any shoving.  Everyone just waited.

Now, it's possible that everyone was just in a good mood, happy to be on holiday.  Many of these people probably traveled from far-away Chinese towns, and were resigned to see the memorial at all costs, lest they never have another opportunity to return to Nanjing.  But I sensed something different, a concentration shared by everyone.  Very few of them were alive for the Rape of Nanjing in 1937, but it seems national memory of the event is more powerful perhaps than the event itself.  The recent islands spat appears to have stregnthened this shared national ethos that has pitted China against Japan for so long.  The notion that all Chinese people just don't like Japan is, obviously, an absurd generalization.  But to be there outside that memorial on Chinese National Day, there was no question that on this day, there was something substantially more powerful than simple sightseeing going.

After deciding that I wasn't going to get anywhere near the memorial, I turned to leave.  As I walked back down the throng of people, I stopped to ask one man towards the end of the massive line why he was willing to wait for so long.  "Because I have to," he replied.  "Because it's our national history."