The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 5 | Issue 8 | Article ID 2502 | Aug 01, 2007

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People's Diplomacy: The Japan-China Friendship Associationand Critical War Memory in the 1950s

Franziska Seraphim

People’s Diplomacy: The Japan-ChinaFriendship Association and Critical WarMemory in the 1950s

Franziska Seraphim

Summary

This article examines the place of Sino-Japanese relations in Japan’s domesticstruggles over war memory in the early 1950s,when the door to an official reconciliation withChina had just closed following the signing ofthe San Francisco Peace Treaty. It focuses onthe Japan-China Friendship Association as alens through which to understand the role ofcivic organization in carving out a public spacefor memories of Japanese wartime aggressionas part of special interest politics.

Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, the Chinese-Japanese relationship has once again emergedas central to regional (and global) security andeconomic vitality. China’s meteoric rise as aneconomic superpower, North Korea’s threat tothe stability of the region, and the changingpolitics of Japan’s U.S. alliance have sharpenednational rivalries at the same time as regionalintegration has become a desired goal. Thisrealignment of power relations elicited by nownotorious “history wars” about Japan’s allegedfailure to appropriately address its aggressivewartime past, from vague governmentalapologies and ambiguous history textbooks tooutright denials of war crimes by somenationalist politicians. In the early 2000s,

diplomatic relations between the People’sRepublic of China and Japan plummeted overprime minister Koizumi’s annual visits toYasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s military deadare enshrined along with some Class A warcriminals. Koizumi’s handling of war memoryissues also drew unprecedented criticismacross the political spectrum in Japan—andespecially from the business community—asdetrimental to Japan’s foreign political andeconomic interests. The place of “historicalmatters” in Sino-Japanese relations changedagain in April 2007, when Chinese premierWen Jiabao visited Tokyo to “melt the ice,”focusing squarely on economic cooperationwhile only briefly mentioning the “properhandling” of issues relating to the twocountries’ shared history as the “basis of goodbilateral relations.”[1] Prime minister Abe andhis entire cabinet, for their part, decided not tovisit Yasukuni Shrine the following August 15.

The current imbrications of war memory andSino-Japanese economic ties seemingly contrastwith the first three Cold War decades, whenJapan and China had no official diplomaticrelations and Japanese struggles with warmemory rarely made international headlines. Infact, however, the desire for trade withmainland China played a significant role in theway that critical war memories of Japaneseaggression assumed public attention in theopening stages of the Cold War. The peacetreaty negotiations in the last years of theoccupation and Japan’s independence in April1952 galvanized the progressive and radicalleft in opposition to the conservative Yoshidagovernment and its American supporters. Theyinspired mass protest movements of

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unprecedented scale and focused interestpolitics on issues of the war and its aftermaththat had not been adequately addressed underthe Allied occupation. One such issue wasJapan’s relationship with China after theCommunist Revolution and the establishment ofthe People’s Republic of China (PRC) underMao Zedong in October 1949. The UnitedStates’ deliberate exclusion of China and othercommunist countries from the peace treaty andthe growing enmity between the two during theKorean War (1950–53) alarmed many Japaneseintellectuals, businessmen, and socialist andeven conservative politicians, some of whomhad been so-called China hands before andduring the war.

Just as Japan’s pol i t ica l opt ions forinternational rehabilitation became narrowlycircumscribed by its alliance with the UnitedStates in the deepening Cold War, a whole newrange of discursive possibilities concerningJapanese war memories opened up. The returnof convicted war criminals to public life (andeven national politics), the belated disclosure ofthe real horrors of the Hiroshima and Nagasakiatomic bombings, the stories of repatriatesfrom Japan’s former empire, and bestsellingcollections of war testaments brought a flood ofmemories to public prominence and providedfertile ground for liberal democrats, pacifists,and nationalists of different vintages toformulate their respective political agendaswith great urgency. It was in this context thatan eclectic group of people with personal andprofessional ties to China formed a movementto “set the grand stage of Japanese-Chinesefriendship” by promoting cultural and economicexchanges “between the two peace-lovingpeoples” based on remembering and atoningfor Japanese war crimes against Chinesepeople, especially Chinese forced laborers inJapan.

One of the first collaborative projects ofatonement was the retelling of an uprising atthe Hanaoka mine through a long series of

woodcuts. These were originally presented as aslide show (kamishibai) at local storytellingevents. Prepared under the guidance of a localartist, Nii Hiroharu, and published in 1951 inbook form as Hanaoka Story (Hanaokamonogatari), these woodcuts adapted aChinese tradition of political protest art thathad become very popular in China before andduring the war. The series depicted in graphicdetail the conditions of Chinese (and Korean)forced laborers in the camp at Hanaoka, acopper mine run by the Kajima corporation(image 1), their brutal treatment at the handsof the mine supervisors, the laborers’ uprising(image 2), and the Japanese supervisors’ bloodycrackdown in June 1945, which left 418Chinese dead (image 3). One of the last panelsshowed Kajima’s escape from responsibility forthis crime as the big capitalists prevailed,undisturbed by the memory of the victims(image 4). The book remains in print todayafter more than 60 years and serves not only asa record of the Hanaoka massacre but also as apowerful reminder of Japanese brutality andaggression against Chinese, Korean, and other

Asian laborers.[2]

Image 1

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Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

This sentiment of remorse and atonement forspecific Japanese war crimes was central to theestablishment of the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation (Nitchu yuko kyokai) on 1 October1950, the first anniversary of the CommunistRevolution. The Friendship Association heldthat wi thout a peace t reaty and thenormalization of official relations with the PRC,the state of war between the two countriescontinued to victimize both peoples—if not withbullets, then by preventing the settlement ofhumanitarian issues and economic recoverythrough trade. In the group’s first statement,leaders blamed “American imperialism” forcausing a revival of “Japanese militarism” bypressuring the government into a U.S.-Japanalliance that required remilitarization, therebyimplicitly threatening Chinese nationalsecurity. But it was the Japanese government,they held, that, against the will of its ownpeople, refused to forge amicable relations withCommunist China and furthermore failed toacknowledge its wartime crimes. In sharpcontrast, China, which had suffered underJapanese militarism, was successfully buildinga people’s state on the principles of peace andnational independence and extending a “handof friendship” to its neighbor.[3]

Although the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation did not have a direct prewar orwartime organizational predecessor to salvageor reconnect with, the careers and personallives of its leading members were deeplyentwined with mainland China and theJapanese presence there in the first half of thetwentieth century. The Friendship Association’sfirst president from 1950 to 1953 wasUchiyama Kanzo (1885–1959), who had spenthalf his life in Shanghai, where he ran aJapanese bookstore from 1917 right throughthe end of the war. Uchiyama had learned towalk a thin line there, taking advantage of the

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Japanese army’s protection of Japanesecivilians in Shanghai during the 1930s, whileoffering his bookstore as a secret meeting placefor Japanese and Chinese literary figures, someof whom were clearly resisters to Japaneseimperialism in China. Known in the early 1930sas the Japanese-Chinese Culture Salon,Uchiyama’s bookstore was a refuge for thefamous Chinese writer Lu Xun before his deathin 1936 and one of several Shanghai liaisoncenters for Japanese communists like OzakiHotsumi, an Asahi shinbun reporter laterinvolved in the Richard Sorge spy ring.Uchiyama returned to Japan in 1947 andreopened his bookstore in the Kanda district ofTokyo, this time specializing in Chinesebooks.[4]

Ito Takeo (1895–1984), another foundingmember of the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation, had an illustrious prewar andwartime career in the research section of theSouth Manchurian Railway Company (SMR). Asthe director of the company’s Shanghai office,he was friends with China specialists in thenavy, while also maintaining close relationshipswith left-wing intellectuals critical of Japan’swar in China, including Ozaki Hotsumi. Thediscovery of the Richard Sorge spy ring inTokyo led to a series of arrests of scientistsworking for the SMR Research Department inShanghai in 1942–43 and the execution ofOzaki. Ito was sent to prisons in remote areasof northern China in June 1943 but wasreleased the following year. A number of Ito’sResearch Department colleagues remained inChina after 1945 to oversee the dismantling ofthe SMR. Others returned to Japan and devotedthemselves to building up the field of EastAsian Studies at Japanese universities.[5]

The Japan-China friendship movement alsorelied heavily on politicians with prewarcareers in social activism. Its second directorwas the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) politicianMatsumoto Jiichiro (1887–1966), the founder in1922 and chairman of the Leveling Society

(Suiheisha), an organization for the restorationof the burakumin (outcast class) to full socialprivileges. Matsumoto was arrested in 1942 butrestarted his activism on behalf of burakuemancipation in 1946, developing it into a massorganization backed by many left-wing groups.Another prewar social activist and postwarSocia l is t pol i t ic ian was Oyama Ikuo(1880–1955), who had been a prominentMarxist economist and spent the war years inexile in the United States. Returning to Japan in1947, he became a member of the Lower Houseof the Diet and a leading member of severalpeace organizations. Instrumental in theFriendship Association’s quest for the revival oftrade with mainland China was the activeparticipation of Hoashi Kei (1905–89), apostwar Socialist politician and Diet member(of both Upper and Lower Houses), who wasreelected seven times from 1947 on. Hoashihad been director of the Heavy IndustryCouncil in the prewar period and a consultantto the Ministry of Commerce and Industryunder Tojo in the early 1940s. He concludedagreements on Japanese-Chinese trade in the1950s and 1960s and was also on the board ofdirectors for the Japan–Soviet Union FriendshipAssociation and the Association for the Returnof Koreans Living in Japan.[6]

At the time of the Association’s establishment,one-third of its 78 founding members wereintellectuals and China specialists. Anotherthird came from the business world, half ofthem representatives of Chinese overseasbusinesses, and the rest were JSP politicians,labor union representatives, and socialmovement activists, including the mayors ofKyoto and Yokohama. The professionaleclecticism of this organization helped increating a mass movement in the 1950s aroundthe notion that Chinese-Japanese relations,rather than the U.S.-Japanese alliance, shouldserve as the basis of postwar peace. It is safe tosay, however, that the core of the friendshipmovement consistedof people like Ito Takeo and Uchiyama Kanzo,

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who brought to this movement a wealth ofpersonal experience living and working inChina before and during the war, and a deepcommitment to righting the wrongs of theJapanese imperialist presence there.

Responsibility Evaded: Reparations and an“Incomplete” Peace

Japan’s defeat in 1945 did not immediatelyerase its deep, multilevel entanglement withdevelopments on the Chinese mainland. As theexamples above show, many Japanese hadmade successful careers in China before as wellas during the war, and the line betweenparticipating in the government’s militaristventures and nurturing an anti-imperialistattitude deeply sympathetic to the Chinesepeople was sometimes blurred in real life.Some Japanese recognized, sympathized, andin a few cases actively supported Chineseresistance to Japanese imperialist ventures inChina. But most simply played their own smallparts in Japan’s vast and multifaceted presencethere, which extended far beyond militarycombat. The legacies of this complicatedhistory, however, were largely buried in newCold War enmities as perceived by Washingtonand implemented by the occupation forces inJapan. Under MacArthur, GHQ dealt directlywith two main issues concerning Japanese-Chinese relations: the repatriation of Japanesefrom the Chinese mainland, and reparations.Repatriation was an ongoing humanitarianproblem that spilled over into the 1950s andrequired the engagement of pr ivateorganizations such as the Red Cross and theJapan-China Friendship Association. The returnof Chinese and Koreans living in Japan at theend of the war, many of them forced laborers,was another matter. The loss of their status asJapanese nationals after the war, as well as thecontemporary conditions of civil war in bothChina and Korea, made th is reverserepatriation difficult and in some casesimpossible, complicated by the fact thatsignificant numbers chose to stay in Japan

rather than return to their war torn countries.

The reparations issue, however, was even moredirectly bound up with Cold War politics andthe interests of the United States in particular.Both the United States and the ChineseNationalist government had drawn up separateplans demanding Japanese reparationspayments well before the end of the war. Incontrast to Chinese leaders, who demandedthat Japan transfer its assets and industrialinfrastructure to rebuild the shattered Chineseeconomy and compensate for the huge publicand private losses it had inflicted in the courseof the war, the U.S. government approachedJapan’s reparations as an issue of economicpolicy rather than of punishment andrestitution. The Communist Revolution and theestablishment of the PRC in October 1949sealed the fate of U.S.-Chinese negotiationsover Japanese reparations.[7] The UnitedStates declared Communist China an enemyand brought Japan fully into its own orbit ofstrategic and economic interests in the region.The resulting mass protests in Japan againstthe exclusion of China and other Communistcountries from the peace treaty and thedemand of a “full peace agreement,” however,virtually ignored the abandonment of thereparations program. Indeed, major leaders ofthe protests, such as the Teachers’ Union,explicit ly stated their desire to havereparations waived and instead to rebuild EastAsian trade relations so that Japan would notremain dependent on the United States.

In contrast, organizations specifically focusingon Japanese-Chinese relations were formed atthis time to demand the resurrection of tradebetween the two countries on the basis ofatonement for Japan’s wartime aggression. TheChinese Revolution demonstrated to them thatChina had in fact thrown off the shackles of thepast and was building a peaceful society onnew principles, while the Japanese governmenthad failed to make a clean break with itsimperialist past by showing remorse for its war

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conduct. Whereas most on the liberal left sawthat break with the past embodied in thecommitment to “democracy,” participants inthe Japan-China friendship movement stakedtheir hopes on a fundamentally alteredrelationship with China, which required a fullacknowledgment of Japan’s unilateralresponsibility for its aggressive war in Asia.

Critical to the unity of this eclectic movementwas the belief that the breakdown in relationswith China was due to Japan alone. Thisreflected not only a moral and intellectualstandpoint but also a political stance towardthe contemporary situation, informed by aparticular view of the prewar and wartime past.Essentially, the group held that Japan’scentury-long practice of imperialistic andmilitaristic policies toward China, paired with apopular attitude of contempt for its “backward”neighbor, was now being revived throughJapan’s support of American imperialism inAsia. As early as January 1950, a statement ofgoals for the proposed Friendship Associationhinted at this belief:

The first step toward rebuilding ademocratic Japan is to dispose of ourself-satisfied island-nation mentality andto become an international peoplewil l ing to preserve peace in al ldirections. It is therefore necessary thatnot only the Pacific but also the JapanSea and the East China Sea become“free waterways.” It is an old truth that“Japan will not prosper if China doesnot prosper.” We should recognize this,but in a way that corrects the old viewof China.[8]

In the early 1950s, the Friendship Associationaccused the Japanese government of failing inat least three ways to “correct the old view ofChina.” First, the government both covered upand evaded practical responsibility forJapanese war crimes committed againstChinese people in both China and Japan. One

specific example heavily publicized by theFriendship Association in its first years was theHanaoka massacre of 30 June 1945. Second, itpointed out, neither the Japanese governmentnor the people correctly understood thesignificance of the Communist Revolution. Itwas in China, not in Japan, that people hadsucceeded in throwing off the shackles of theimperialist past and were building a freesociety of “new men” based on the principles ofindependence, equality, and peace. Third, byfollowing the United States in recognizing theTaiwan Nationalist regime as the legitimaterepresentative of China, Japan once again usedChina’s internal affairs for its own self-servingpolitical purposes instead of accepting reality.

Specialists on contemporary China, includingscholars and critics in the humanities andsocial sciences, served as the Association’smain resource in its endeavor to articulate aresponsible memory of Japan’s war in China.The Japan-China friendship movementattracted intellectuals who had professional orpersonal ties to mainland China, enthusiasm forthe Communist Revolution from an ideologicalstandpoint, and a progressive politicalunderstanding of culture. Takeuchi Yoshimi,perhaps the best-known postwar scholar ofmodern Chinese literature, held views thatmirrored those of the Friendship Associationbut never actually joined the movement andrefused several invitations to visit China as amember of a cultural delegation. AlthoughTakeuchi became a political activist for a shorttime at the height of the 1960 movementagainst the renewal of the U.S.-Japan SecurityTreaty (Anpo), his understanding of revolutionwas theoretical rather than practical, and hesteadfastly refused to get involved in politics.

Nevertheless, Takeuchi’s vision of Chineseresistance to foreign and domestic exploitationas a “model” for Japanese society had greatintellectual influence on those active in theJapanese-Chinese friendship movement. Itresonated powerfully among those who

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contrasted the success of China’s CommunistRevolution with the dearth of revolutionarypromise in Japan in the early 1950s. Takeuchi’sChina, in Lawrence Olson’s words, “served avitally affirming purpose as an object ofaspiration and an abstract good.” Intellectualsworking in the friendship movement, however,devoted themselves to making China thesubject of political discourse and popularknowledge in Japan. They accepted the PRC asa “qualitatively different kind of civilizationpeopled by ‘new men.’”[9] As a first step towardchanging the Japanese people’s poorunderstanding of China, the Association printedan article denouncing the Japanese term Shinaas imperialist and promoting the use ofChugoku as the correct name for the People’sRepublic of China.

In fact, intellectuals writing in Nihon toChugoku not only demanded atonement forJapanese wrong-doing in the past but clung tothe political and moral notion of a new reality.If Japan had led Asia into war, China was nowthe leader in building peace and prosperity forall in Asia. Indeed, a 1953 article entitled “TheNew China and Japan” took issue with everycriticism of the new regime in China in thecontemporary media and turned it around todemonstrate the PRC’s competence and goodintentions. Politically, China presented nothreat to its neighbors because its strengthrested neither on dictatorship nor on monopolycapitalism. With the people taking the lead,“why should a country that has reformed itself,that knows the way to develop on its own . . .be a threat to its neighbors?” Militarily, theKorea conflict had shown that China sent thePeople’s Liberation Army abroad only tosupport, not to dominate. It had consulted withthe Korean government before dispatching itstroops and had been the first to withdraw.Economically, the Chinese Revolution hadcontributed to building peace because it restedon the economic empowerment of the people.“Japan’s history has shown that Japanesecolonialism in China and Korea was based on

the absence of domestic economic growth. Thepeople were losing their freedom with everyday, while the capitalists increased their power.This is the path to invasion, and China is on theopposite path now.” In fact, China representedan economic asset to Japan in as much asrelations could now be formed on the basis ofindependence and equality instead ofcolonialism.[10]

These arguments lined up all too well withsentiments expressed in Zhou Enlai’s speechesand in People’s Daily editorials. They alsooverlapped with a wider anti-American, pro-Asian nationalism espoused by many prominentintellectuals on the liberal left, includingMaruyama Masao and Shimizu Ikutaro.Opposition to the San Francisco Peace Treatyand the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, whichexcluded the PRC and guaranteed the UnitedStates military bases in Japan, represented acommon starting point for action amongpacifists of different ideological convictions andformed the core of the Friendship Association’scampaign for the restoration of formal Sino-Japanese relations. The Asia-Pacific PeaceConference, held in Beijing in the fall of 1952with participants from 40 countries, providedan internationally visible opportunity for“people’s diplomacy” through culturalexchange. Until the last minute, the ForeignMinistry withheld permission for the Japanesedelegation of fourteen peace activists(including representatives of the FriendshipAssociation) to travel to Beijing. Preparatorymeetings in Tokyo as well as in Beijingattracted wide participation and mediacoverage. A resolution regarding the “JapanQuestion,” one of eleven official statementsissued over the course of the twelve-dayconference, demanded a complete peace treatywith Japan, expressed the Japanese people’sdesire to “promote the establishment of anindependent, democratic, free and peacefulnew Japan by stopping the revival of Japanesemilitarism,” and called for the completewithdrawal of foreign troops from Japanese

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soil.[11]

The belief among friendship movement activiststhat peace in Asia would originate in Chinaonce American imperialism was overcomeappeared to have been powerfully reaffirmed inthe Five Peace Principles of PeacefulCoexistence that Zhou Enlai and JawaharlalNehru announced at their summit in June 1954:mutual respect for territorial sovereignty;nonintervention; nonaggression; equality andreciprocity; and peaceful coexistence despiterival ideologies. This held enormoussignificance for the intellectual left as anattempt to apply democratic principles directlyto international relations rather than todomestic affairs alone. Moreover, the leftregarded this extension of democracy as havingoriginated in Asia and not the West. It gaveintellectuals involved in “cultural diplomacy” asense of triumph over America and Europe inthe realm of political ethics. Shimizu Ikutaroexpressed this sense when he wrote:

If we think about the significance ofthese five principles, it must be seen asonly natural that these principles,differing from the great principles andtheories to date, were created not inWashington, Paris or Moscow, but in acorner of Asia. That is not in thecompany of power, but rather inopposition to power. . . . The life ofdemocracy is, through the hands of thepeoples of Asia and Africa, beingreborn.[12]

The movement to change the basis ofinternational relations in Asia from the U.S.-Japan security alliance to Sino-Japanesefriendship rested in part on a new ethnicnationalism centering on Asia. It was areactionary nationalism in the sense that it wasborn out of resistance particularly against theUnited States (and the Cold War system), andthus in some ways resembled the GreaterAsianist thought of the Meiji period. But in

defining a shared Asian identity and destiny,perceptions of cultural and racial commonalityretreated behind a belief in historical progress.For it was in Asia that a new system ofinternational peace, independence, anddemocracy promised to replace the oldcapitalist nationalism that had caused WorldWar II and was still championed by the UnitedStates.

Grassroots Diplomacy

Within the contemporary political environmentand from the standpoint of resistance againstthe state, the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation adopted “people’s diplomacy” as itsmodus vivendi. This term, kokumin gaiko inJapanese, was adapted from the Chineserenmin waijiao, coined by the PRC’s firstpremier, Zhou Enlai. However, the Chineseterm renmin (jinmin in Japanese) means “thepeople” in communist terminology, whereaskokumin, the Japanese appropriation, impliesthe people of a nat ion, rather than aproletariat. The Friendship Association did notsimply adopt communist terminology butadjusted it to reflect the political realities ofJapan. Conceptually, “people’s diplomacy”shifted the agency in foreign relations fromstates (which conducted wars) to “the people”(who created peace). Practically, the term wasused to describe the informal relations betweenthe Chinese “people’s” state and Japanese civicorganizations like the Friendship Association.The Friendship Association thereby insisted onthe putative unity between the Chinese peopleand their (communist) state on the one hand,while simultaneously stressing the diametricopposition between the Japanese people andtheir government under the thumb of theUnited States on the other.

“People’s diplomacy” was not only born out ofthe political realities of the day but in turnshaped the place of critical war memory inpublic life. Far from simply an oppositionmovement, the Friendship Association’s work

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supplemented official policy in ways that evenconservative politicians welcomed. Its successin managing Sino-Japanese relations in factdepended on the tacit consent of thegovernment: the Friendship Associationpersistently lobbied the same state institutionsit protested against, so as to ensure its positionin brokering relations with the PRC. To be sure,the Association deserved credit for creatingand maintaining important channels ofcommunication with the PRC from whichofficial relations, once they were normalized (in1972) and formally restored (in 1978), couldeasily be institutionalized. Nevertheless, untilthen its activities also helped to perpetuate thepolitical arrangement by which relations withChina remained outside the pol it icalmainstream, while official policy focused onrelations with the United States. This politicalarrangement created the framework in whichthe Friendship Association’s memory of the warcommanded public attention. Acknowledgmentof and atonement for Japan’s wartimeaggression had its legitimate place in postwarpublic life—namely, as part of special interestpolitics. But insofar as this interest remainedoutside the political mainstream, it did noteffectively challenge official policy, whichmarginal ized China and ignored warresponsibility because it was politicallyexpedient to do so in a Cold War context inwhich the United States was the hegemonicpower.

Although the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation established itself within a few yearsas a political interest group connected with theopposition Socialist Party (and indirectly withthe Communist Party) and recognized on thehighest bureaucratic level, it styled itself as a“people’s movement.” One of the Association’sefforts to bring together people from all walksof life and establish relations with Chinesepeople involved a letter-writing campaign onthe occasion of the fourteenth anniversary ofthe Marco Polo Bridge incident—the militaryclash between Chinese and Japanese troops on

7 July 1937 that marked the beginning of theSino-Japanese War. Between 1 July and 15August 1951, the Association called onindividuals and groups from political,economic, cultural, scholarly, labor, andhousewives’ circles to send greetings toChinese individuals and groups on themainland and on Taiwan. An article in Nihon toChugoku entitled “Considering August 15th:Let Us Send Greetings to China!” invitedpeople to write down their “heartfelt thoughtsand wishes for the Chinese people” and sendthese letters to the Friendship Association to bemailed to Chinese newspapers (and ultimatelycollected and published in a single volume).The letters urged readers to remember thehuman misery set in motion by the Marco PoloBridge incident, not only for the Chinese butalso for the Japanese, who “were driven intosuch an aggressive war [by the militariststate]” and for the whole world. Moreover,current circumstances threatened to revive thehorrors of that war:

In the past two to three years, as thecrisis in Korea poisoned both theinternational climate and that in ouro w n c o u n t r y , o u r h o p e s f o rpeace—acquired at the highestsacrifice—are fading, and the sound ofshells and smell of gun-powder havereturned. Given Japan’s precarious past,we have to establish friendly relationswith our neighbor China. We cannotallow hostile relations to develop norcan we tolerate them. Cooperationbetween the Chinese and the Japaneseis our heart’s desire, . . . and wecommemorate this year’s anniversary of7 July as the most straightforward steptoward mutual understanding betweenour two peoples.[13]

The letters reprinted in subsequent issues ofNihon to Chugoku, typically written bypresidents of labor unions and otherorganizations, echoed the sentiments expressed

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in this passage. They emphasized the unitybetween the Chinese and Japanese peoples bystressing their common victimization at thehands of Japanese militarists in the past andthe conservative Japanese government in thepresent.

This characterization of Japanese attitudestoward China closely matched the ChineseCommunist Party’s official criticism of Japanand exposed the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation to accusations of acting as theCCP’s mouthpiece. The Mainichi shinbuncarried an article on 17 July 1950, even beforethe Association’s official establishment,branding the movement’s leaders “a group ofspies” who carried out subversive activitiesagainst the U.S. military without the knowledgeof the majority of its would-be members. At theheight of the Red Purge, this amounted to nosmall threat for the movement, and theAssociation would have to defend itself againstsuch accusations for years to come. Throughoutthe months leading up to the signing of thepeace treaty in September 1951, moreover, thePRC mobil ized youth groups, studentorganizations, and the councils of every majorcity in China to send messages to “the Japanesepeople” encouraging them to protest the treaty.Statements opposing a “partial peace” by theChinese National Association of SocialScientists and the Association of NaturalScientists dovetailed neatly with the peaceappeals issued earlier by Japanese scientistsand the Peace Problems Discussion Grouparound Maruyama Masao and NanbaraShigeru. Friendship movement activists inJapan translated and distributed all thesemessages.

Conversely, the Friendship Association accusedthe J apanese government o f u s inganticommunist ideology to avoid facing the newpolit ical real it ies in Asia and escaperesponsibility for Japan’s wartime aggression.During the peace treaty negotiations, this wasan especially heated argument voiced by much

of the opposition on the left. A publiccontroversy unfolded when it became knownthat Prime Minister Yoshida had secretlywritten to John Foster Dulles on 10 February1952 agreeing to conclude a peace treaty withthe Nationalist regime on Taiwan withouthaving formally brought this matter before theDiet . An art ic le in Nihon to Chugokudenounced the “Yoshida letter” in moral terms,as a continuation of the utter disrespect forChina that had caused the war in the firstplace—and a denial of responsibility for the waragainst the Chinese people: “If Prime MinisterYoshida felt even an inch of remorse forJapanese militarist undertakings in China, whywould he refuse to recognize the governmentwhich represents all of China at the presenttime and instead conclude a “peace treaty”with a government exiled to Taiwan?”[14]

To highlight Japan’s past and present practiceof construing the political reality in China in itsown interest, the statement quoted wartimeprime minister Konoe Fumimaro. Konoe hadinsisted, in 1938, that “we will not deal withChiang Kai-shek” at a time when Chiang did infact represent China while Japan supported apuppet regime in Nanjing. Now that Chiangwas exiled, the argument continued, theJapanese government insisted on recognizinghim, this time in order to bolster its alliancewith the United States. The authors of thestatement also pointed to the February 1947massacre in Taipei of Taiwanese resisting theChiang regime. They stressed that byrecognizing Taipei instead of Beijing, Japan hadagain allied itself with an aggressor rather thanwith the communist liberator. Indeed, it wasthe Association’s view that establishmentpolitics in Japan had not fundamentallychanged since the war.

Building a people’s movement, however,entailed specific organizational strategies inaddition to community work. By 1953 theFriendship Association had secured a wide netof political affiliates. Six smaller organizations

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had joined as members, all offering specializedservices in one or another aspect of Chineseculture. In addition, two Japan-China tradeorganizations, two academic researchinstitutes, and two organizations facilitatingrepatriation of Japanese from China becameclose affiliates. The largest, if least structured,reservoir of recognition came from so-calledmass organizations across the politicalspectrum, including seventeen labor unions andeighteen peace groups. In addition, all six mainpolitical parties and five powerful bureaucraticagencies (the cabinet, the Foreign Ministry, theHealth and Welfare Ministry, the LaborMinistry, and the Agency for Assistance toReturnees) recognized the Japan-ChinaFriendship Association as a major politicalpressure group. The Association in turnfacilitated the establishment of other China-related organizations such as the Committee toCommemorate Chinese Prisoner of WarMartyrs in 1953, the Japan-China Associationfor Cultural Exchange in 1956, and the LiaisonSociety for Returnees from China, also in 1956.

People’s diplomacy enjoyed almost immediatepublic visibility and success in relation to theissue of restarting efforts to repatriateJapanese nationals left in China at war’s end.After the initial wave of 1,492,397 returneesfrom China through 1946, the numbersplummeted to 3,758 in 1947 and to 92 in 1951.On 1 December 1952 the Beijing governmentannounced that about 30,000 Japanese stillresiding in China enjoyed the protection of theChinese government, lived happy lives, andeven sent money back to their families in Japan.It asserted that those who chose to return totheir homeland would receive assistance fromthe Chinese government, but since China couldnot provide enough ships, it asked for the helpof Japanese citizens’ groups under theleadership of the Chinese Red Cross Society.The Japanese Red Cross, the Japan-ChinaFriendship Association, and the Peace LiaisonSociety became the liaison partners on theJapanese side. The Friendship Association

immediately contacted some of the Japaneseliving in China through their newspaperMinshu shinbun (People’s Newspaper) as wellas their families in Japan. The first ship ofJapanese returnees arrived in Japan on 23March 1953, and the number of repatriatesreached 26,051 by the end of the year. TheJapanese government had provided the shipsbut offered few services to help the newcomersrelocate in Japan.

The successful repatriation efforts clearlyendorsed the Association’s “people’sdiplomacy” and offered an opportunity toconvince the public that the Japanesegovernment not only took little responsibilityfor its militarist past, but in fact continued it. Insharp contrast, the Chinese governmentappeared willing both to lay the past to restand build an amicable relationship with Japanand also to share its peaceful progress withJapanese individuals who could now transmittheir positive experiences to their compatriotsat home. Even before their return, the Japaneseleft in China had become one of the FriendshipAssociation’s constituencies. The Associationgave them a voice in Japan by printing theirletters in its periodicals and provided mediationservices for their return, but also clearly usedthem to support the Association’s politicalgoals.

When the first ship arrived, the FriendshipAssociation’s vice-president, Hirano Yoshitaro,personally welcomed the one thousandreturnees as “victims of Japan’s aggressive warwho return not defeated but with importantgains from the new China.” He expressedregret at the lack of government measures tohelp relocate them, which demonstrated thestate’s unwillingness to assume responsibilityfor its own citizens as well as for the Chinesekilled by Japan during the war. Most of all,Hirano urged the returnees to becomeambassadors of China through their personallives and experiences there: “We believe thatyou are the people who can connect our two

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countries because you have first-handknowledge of the new China. The Japanesepeople are thrilled to have you home, so pleaseuse this opportunity and teach them about thenew China and deepen their interest andcommitment to friendship with China.”[15]

Japanese war criminals tried and convicted atChinese war crimes tribunals received specialattention upon their return to Japan in 1956.They had received comparatively lightsentences so as not to harm Sino-Japanesefriendship, as a Chinese official statementexplained, and had undergone significantreeducation during their eleven-year residencein China. Once in Japan, some of them spokepublicly at town meetings and various localcommittees about their experiences in Chinaand served as cultural ambassadors of the “newChina.” Most importantly, they brought theissue of war responsibility into sharp focus bystrongly criticizing their own wartime actionsand forming their own groups built upon thenotion of atonement. The FriendshipAssociation reminded its readers that thepunishment of these war criminals did notabsolve the rest of the Japanese of theirresponsibility for the war. In a sense, the warcriminals were also victims of Japan’smilitaristic policies. But unlike the majority ofJapanese living in Japan after the war, they haddeeply reflected on their crimes during theirstay in China.

While the repatriation issue struck ahumanitarian chord and thus received publicattention, the trade issue played a significantrole in the confrontation between the Japanesegovernment and the PRC-backed opposition.Trade with China enjoyed support acrosspolitical lines. Insofar as the particular politicalarrangement in which the revival of trade withChina took place in the 1950s revealedcompeting goals, the China trade was anobviously charged issue in both foreign policyand domestic politics. The ruling LDP did itsbest to keep the China trade outside Japan’s

international relations framework, which wasguided by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. TheJSP, however, sought to use the China trade toat tack and eventua l ly a l ter Japan’sinternational position as a principal ally of theUnited States. In a speech to the Japan-ChinaFriendship Committee on 13 July 1950,Katsumata Seiichi, head of the Socialist Party’sPolicy Research Committee, highlighted theconnections between economics and foreignpolicy. He argued that American economic aidartificially propped up the Japanese economyinstead of allowing it to develop the self-sufficiency that was vital for true nationalindependence. Even though MacArthur insistedon the purely economic nature of American aid,the advent of the Korean War had exposedunderlying political considerations.

But as long as the focus remained on mutualeconomic benefits, the restoration of traderelations was marked by successful cooperationbecause it was desired by all sides, if fordifferent reasons and in different forms. Noconservative cabinet—from that of YoshidaSh igeru ’ s to K i sh i Nobusuke ’ s andbeyond—wanted to sacrifice the China market,even if the Friendship Association accusedthem of deliberately hindering the people’s“natural” aspirations to trade with the Chinese.The conservatives in turn regarded communismin China as “unnatural” and probably short-lived, and were prepared to wait until thereestablishment of diplomatic relations with thePRC would no longer demand Japan’sabrogation of the San Francisco Peace andSecurity Treaty. Yoshida had argued in1951—in defense of his decision to conclude apeace treaty with Taiwan—that formal relationswith the nationalist regime on Taiwan did notpreclude informal trade relations with the PRC.Picking up on this quote, Democratic Partyvice-president Mamoru Shigemitsu opined thatYoshida Shigeru had hoped to speed up thisprocess by “Europeanizing” China through thepromotion of trade relations.

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In fact, Yoshida’s “separation of politics andeconomics” (seikei bunri) and Zhou Enlai’s“people’s diplomacy” dovetailed rather nicelyon the issue of trade. The Chinese insistenceuntil the mid-1950s on dealing with theJapanese people but not their government onlyreinforced Japan’s policy of treating trade andofficial diplomacy as separate matters,informally consenting to the former whileofficially refusing the latter. The work of theJapan-China Friendship Association was clearlywelcomed by some LDP politicians andbusinessmen who recognized China’s crucialrole in Japan’s economy. Murata Shozo,president of the Japan International TradePromotion and a member of elite financialcircles, worked closely with the Association andtraveled to Beijing numerous times to negotiateand sign trade agreements with the Chinese.He considered diplomatic relations with thePRC to be premature, given the internationalsituation in the 1950s, and insisted that theestablishment of economic relations precedethe restoration of diplomatic relations. Muratathus supported the government’s position whiletaking the lead in ensuring the success ofpeople’s diplomacy.

And yet, people’s diplomacy was also able tochallenge, and even undermine, the officialseparation of politics and economics byworking toward closing the perceived gapbetween “the people” and “government.” M. Y.Cho observed a gradual politicization ofsuccessive informal trade agreements withCh ina , o r ig ina t ing f rom pro -Ch inaorganizations and even extending to thecabinet itself. Whereas the first tradeagreement of 1 June 1952 was decidedlyapolitical, the third agreement of 4 May 1955clearly outlined the establishment of mutualand permanent trade representation missionsin each country, with personnel to be grantedthe same status as official diplomats. Moreover,their responsibilities were to include politicallobbying within their respective governmentsfor normalization of official diplomatic

relations. In this way, pro-China organizationsin Japan not only benefited from the increasedpower vested in them because of thegovernment’s seikei bunri policy, but in turnused their success in promoting trade relationsto advance a broader agenda vis-à-vis theconservative establishment. There werenonetheless significant setbacks, for examplethe Kishi cabinet’s refusal to sign the fourthtrade agreement in 1958, after the PRC hadopenly demanded that Japan commit itself toChina’s three political principles—“nohostilities against the PRC, no involvement inthe two-China conspiracy, no hindering thenormalization of Sino-Japanese relations.”Despite this temporary failure of people’sdiplomacy, informal mechanisms remained inplace for the quick revival and expansion ofeconomic relations with China in the early1960s, eventually leading up to Sino-Japaneserapprochement in 1972.[16]

Clearly, the Friendship Association aimed toshelter a wide range of affiliations andconstituencies under the umbrella term“people’s movement.” Its commitment tofurther its aims through people’s diplomacythus acquired different forms and meanings indifferent settings. Socialist and CommunistParty politicians representing the Association’sinterests in the Diet presented themselves asthe “voices of the people” vis-à-vis theconservative establishment. Business peoplewho depended on trade with China and theirpolit ical representatives drew on thecontemporary flow of private trade on aregional and business-centered basis, as well ason the desire in financial circles to reestablishChina as a principal market for Japanese goods.Japanese repatriates from China as well asChinese residents in Japan could act as themost direct ambassadors for Sino-Japanesefriendship, precisely because they personallybore the marks of Japanese hostility againstChina. Perhaps most importantly, intellectualsand scholars, for whom intellectual freedomwas a concern, practiced a more direct form of

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people’s diplomacy. As authorities on Chineseaffairs, they were able to give the Japanesepublic an alternative view of contemporaryChina through lectures and the collection anddistribution of documents that were otherwiseunavailable. These four constituencies thushighlight the diverse means by which theFriendship Association’s interest politicscontributed to the dynamics of war memory inthe postwar political arena.

Remembering Japanese Aggression

The Japan-China Friendship Association neverfailed to emphasize the centrality of culturalexchange in the process of building goodrelations between the two countries. Thesecultural activities nevertheless had clearpolitical implications, not only because of theAssociation’s favorable treatment of Chinesecommunism, but because of the prominence ofcultural policy generally in diplomatic relationsamong countries all over the world. As AkiraIriye has shown, cultural internationalismbecame an urgent matter in the aftermath ofWorld War II, reflected, for example, in theestabl ishment of the United NationsEducational, Scientif ic, and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO), whose 1945constitution declared that “since wars begin inthe minds of men, it is in the minds of men thatthe defenses of peace must be constructed.” Sowidespread was the belief in the importance ofcultural contact for the preservation ofpeace—perhaps especially among countriesthat had suffered defeat in war—that a WestGerman Press and Information Bureau releasecould express perfectly the general aspirationsof the Japan-China Friendship Association:“Through alliance policies, you win allies,through trade policies, business partners,through cultural policies, friends.” This couldequally well have been the motto of the Japan-China friendship movement. The preface to ajoint statement of 51 intellectuals in support offriendly cooperation with China in March 1952defined friendship as a matter of “civilization”

that manifested itself through culturalexchange.

From the early 1950s on, the FriendshipAssociation collected Chinese printed andvisual materials, including newspapers,magazines, research documents, photographs,art, and movies, and distributed them topublishing companies, schools, and its ownmembers. Until its closure in March 2005,copies of these materials were collected in theJapan-China Friendship library, located in theNitchu yuko kaikan in Tokyo. Unlike theAssociation’s political work, which was handledmainly by the central office in Tokyo, culturalactivities were carried out predominantly onthe prefectural and local levels. Local chapterswere heavily involved in community work,creating public awareness about the PRCthrough lectures, movies, photo and artexhibitions, publications of war memoirs, andthe distribution of Chinese-language books andmagazines.

Much of this cultural activity took place underthe rubric of the “movement never again toallow war between Japan and China” (Nitchufusa i sen undo ) and f ocused on thecommemoration of Japanese wartimeaggression against Chinese people. Thisincluded observance of the anniversaries of themain war events on the Chinese mainland, inparticular the Manchurian incident (1931) andthe Marco Polo Bridge incident (1937), whichwere studiously ignored in the national pressuntil decades later. Most of the war crimescommemorated by local Friendship Associationchapters had taken place in Japan proper,however, and involved Chinese forced laborersand prisoners of war. These local organizationscoordinated research into wartime incidents atmines, factories, or farms in 135 locations allover Japan, with the heaviest concentration inHokkaido, and compiled exact data on theChinese laborers who had worked and diedthere.

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Map showing all 135 locations of wartimeincidents involving the death of Chinese forced

laborers [17]

They began by collecting the remains of theChinese dead and conducting Buddhistceremonies to honor them before returningthem to China in white boxes. The Japanesegovernment apparently did not involve itself insuch basic humanitarian work and left thebodies of these Chinese dead scattered in thefields near their workplaces. A gruesome photoof piles of skulls and bones near the Hanaokamine in Akita Prefecture taken in November1945 attests to this.[18]

In addition to many small, local ceremonies,large commemorations were held in biggercities. The first of these took place in April1953 at the Honganji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo.In February of that year, the Chinese VictimsCommemoration Committee had been set up tocoordinate these activities. These wereBuddhist ceremonies, whose rites were sharedby Japanese and Chinese alike, at least inprinciple. As such, they formed an importantcontrast to the Shinto ceremonies usuallyemployed for the commemoration of theJapanese war dead. Later ceremonies, such asa commemoration held in Fukuoka in March1971, included Korean and Japanese victims ofwartime mining incidents as well.

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[19]

Throughout the postwar decades, but especiallyfrom the 1960s through the 1980s, localFriendship Association chapters erected stonemonuments all over Japan to commemorateChinese vict ims of Japanese wartimeaggression, to reflect on Japan’s warresponsibility, and to remind subsequentgenerations of the lessons of that war and theabuse of human rights in the name ofimperialism and militarism. Many of thesemonuments seem to blend harmoniously intotheir park environs, bearing the characters for“Never again war between Japan and China”(Nitchu fusaisen) in front and a more detailedinscription in the back or on the sides. Some ofthese monuments stand out for their abstractdesigns. A five-meter-tall stone pillarcomemorating the Hanaoka massacre waserected near the mine in 1966 and bears thecharacters for “growing tradition of friendship”(hatten dento yugi) on one side and “againstaggressive war” (hantai shinryaku senso) onthe other, using Chinese, rather than Japanese,word order.

Fusaisenhi

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Hanaoka MemorialPhotos are courtesy of Japan-China Friendship

Association

The inscription on the back of the HanaokaMemorial reads:

With the support of caring people fromboth Japan and China, we have erectedthis monument to friendship and neveragain to allow war between Japan andChina. In 1944–1945, 993 Chinese, whohad been brought here illegally underJapanese militarism, lived here in theChusan Dormitory at the foot of thismud-filled dam, abused and forbiddento speak their native language. On 30June 1945, these laborers as well asthose who wanted to protect the honor

of their fatherland rose up as a group toat last oppose Japanese imperialismheroically. Here lie the remains of 418people who gave their lives patrioticallyto this cause. We will forever rememberthis incident, our prayers never again toallow war between Japan and Chinac h i s e l e d i n t o s t o n e f o r t h egrandchildren of both countries.[20]

Although this inscription clearly places theresponsibility for this human rights abuse onJapan and “Japanese militarism,” it avoided anopposition between the Japanese and theChinese people by including Japanese resistersto militarism among the “patriotic” victimsmurdered here.

The Friendship Association attracted thesometimes violent attention of those whointerpreted their activities as politicallymotivated and in fact dictated by the PRC.Indeed, the American occupation forcesthemselves lashed out at the group in 1951 (inthe so-called People’s Daily DistributionSuppression incident), when it arrested severalmembers for distributing “communistpropaganda.” In the Nagasaki incident in May1958, right-wingers burned the Chinese flagthat had been displayed at a local conference topromote Japanese-Chinese trade and culturalexchange. Monument inscriptions that referredto Japan’s war in Asia as unambiguously“aggressive” also invited vandalism. After awave of popular protests against Japan sweptChina (and to a lesser extent Korea) in thespring of 2005, the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation received threats from right-winggroups in Japan that made it cancel the annualmeeting scheduled for late May in Awara,Fukui Prefecture, and switch to a new venue inTokyo in November. According to the ChinaDaily, managing director Yazaki Mitsuharu saidin an off ic ial announcement that theAssociat ion could not guarantee theparticipants’ and local residents’ safety in theface of these threats.[15] This did not keep the

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Association from issuing a formal letter on 2August urging Prime Minister Koizumi not tovisit Yasukuni Shrine on the occasion of thesixtieth anniversary of the war’s end out ofrespect for Chinese suffering at the hands ofJapanese militarism during the war.

Throughout the postwar decades, the Japan-China Friendship Association stood committedto the acknowledgment of Japanese war crimesagainst Asia in general and China in particular.Above all, its shift in focus from the national tothe international level and its belief in Chinese-Japanese cooperation as the only way to apeaceful future set it apart from otherorganizations concerned with war memory.This bilateral focus was supported from variousangles, including geographic proximity,economic necessity, cultural affinity, andideological commitment. The FriendshipAssociation regarded the Cold War split of Asiaas reproducing the deeper and longer splitseparating Japan and China throughout modernhistory. At the same time, it recognized thedisplacement of this historically problematicrelationship by the Cold War system andprotested it as Japan’s “second guilt,” toborrow a phrase Ralph Giordano coined forpostwar Germany (the first guilt being Japan’scondescending attitude and military conducttoward China during the war).

For at least three decades, Cold War divisionscontinued to define both Japanese and worldpolitics, effectively marginalizing voices suchas that of the Friendship Association. And yetthe Friendship Association’s view of Japan’swar and postwar enjoyed an informal, unofficialpublic visibility that paralleled its politicalposition in managing informal Japanese-Chinese relat ions. War memory thatacknowledged and probed into Japan’s warresponsibility toward Asia was neither absentfrom Japanese public life nor actively silencedby a dominant, official narrative. If silencingmechanisms were in place, they did not appearto hinder the Association’s extensive public

activities—lecturing in schools, maintainingarchives open to the public, or erectingmemorials to Chinese victims of Japaneseaggress ion . Rather , the Fr iendshipAssociation’s attempt to shift the parameters ofpublic discourse from a national or trans-Pacific understanding of the war and thepostwar to one centering on Northeast Asia didnot muster the kind of political expediencynecessary to challenge official policy under theCold War system. Because so much of theAssociation’s work appeared to be anadvertising campaign for the PRC at a timewhen the majority of Japanese held deepsuspicions of communism, the FriendshipAssociation’s work (and its rendition of warmemory) had limited appeal. When the ColdWar context gradually dissolved in the 1980s,Chinese-Japanese relations “naturally” tookcenter stage, and the acknowledgment ofJapanese war crimes in Asia found increasingpublic support.

Franziska Seraphim is Associate Professor ofHistory at Boston College and the author ofWar Memory and Social Politics inJ a p a n , 1 9 4 5 - 2 0 0 5(http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Polit i c s - 1 9 4 5 - 2 0 0 5 - H a r v a r d -Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1)(Harvard East Asian Monographs. Thisis a revised version of chapter four of thatbook. Posted at Japan Focus on August 18,2007.

Notes

1. Japan Times, 12 April 2007.2. From Nozoe Kenji, ed., Hanaoka monogatari.

Mumyosha shuppan, 1995. Reprinted with

http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Politics-1945-2005-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674022718/ref=sr_1_1/104-1615893-2559918?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187479109&sr=8-1

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the publisher’s permission. FranziskaSeraphim, War Memory and Social Politicsin Japan, 1945-2005. Harvard UniversityAsia Center Press, 2006.

3. “Tomen no mokuhyo nitsuite.” Nihon toChugoku, 20 February 1950. This journal,Japan and China, was inaugurated inFebruary 1950 under the auspices of theJapan-China Friendship AssociationPreparatory Committee and grew into theFriendship Association’s main organ afterits formal establishment in October 1950.

4. See Joshua Fogel, “The Other JapaneseCommunity,” in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed. WartimeShanghai. Routledge, 1998.

5. For more on Ito Takeo, see Joshua Fogel, ed.,Life along the Manchurian Railway. M.E.Sharpe, 1988.

6. Shakai undo chosakai. Sayoku dantai jiten,Kyokuto shuppansha, 1966.

7. See Okamoto Koichi, “Imaginary Settings:Sino-Japanese-U.S. Relations during theOccupation Years.” Ph.D. dissertation,Columbia University, 2000.

8. “Tomen no mokuhyo ni tsuite,” Nihon toChugoku, 11 December 1953.

9. See Lawrence Olson, “Takeuchi Yoshimi andthe Vision of a Protest Society in Japan” in

Ambivalent Moderns. Roman & Littlefield,1992, pp. 58 and 45.

10. “Shinchugoku to Nihon,” Nihon toChugoku, 11 December 1953.

11. Nihon Chugoku yuko kyokai zenkokuhonbu, Nithchu yuko undo shi. Shonenshuppansha, 1980, p. 58.

12. Quoted in Rikki Kersten, Democracy inPostwar Japan. Routledge, 1996, pp.173-74.

13. “8.15 o mezashite: Chugoku ni aisatsu ookuro!” Nihon to Chugoku, 10 July 1951.

14. “Yoshida shokan nit suite no seimei,” Nihonto Chugoku, 15 February 1952.

15. Hirano Yoshitaro, “Kikokusha no minasane,” Nihon to Chugoku, 1 April 1953.

16. A detailed analysis of this process can befound in M.Y. Cho, Die Volksdiplomatie inOstasien (Otto Harrassowitz, 1971).

17. In Nitchu yuko kyokai, Shogen: Chugokujinkyosei renko , pp. 82-83, a bookletaccompanying a three-part documentaryvideo made by the Japan-China FriendshipAssociation between 1991 and 2001.

18. In Nihon Chugoku yuko kyokai, ed., Nitchuyuko undo no hanseiki, pp. 27-28.

19. Ibid., p. 27.20. China Daily, 19 May 2005.