Can't we all just get along?

It's definitely a change to be surrounded by people who don't like you. I'm not referring to myself personally but rather the country of Japan as a whole. I know we Canadians like to consider ourselves superior to Americans sometimes and we tend to refer to them the same way as the rest of the country does to Torontonians. And I'm sure Americans have quite a few problems with Canadians; Iraq, missle defence and border security to name a few. But on the whole we really get on quite well with each other.

So it's really quite jarring to realize that none of your neighbours like you. In fact they dislike you. I've seen evidence of this almost every day I've been here, long before the anti-Japan prostests by the Chinese popped up a couple of days ago. Japan seems to be constantly in disputes with its neighbours and the roots of these disputes usually stem from pre-WWII history.

I have exactly two english newspapers in my apartment right now and between them I can find about ten articles regarding asian relation conflicts. In one article, S. Korea and Japan are fighting over ownership of a small territory between them. In another, N. Korea is demanding the return of human remains of people that we're allegedly 'kidnapped.' In another, Japan and China are fighting over oil and gas drilling rights on a piece of ocean between them. More often than not, the country who happens to have a conflict with Japan will use the 'history' card invoking the crimes of WWII and before.

The current conflict with China is a whole other story. A lot of Japanese actually agree with China in that they don't want Japan to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. They think that that will just make them even more reliant on the United States. If you read the papers fairly regularly then you are probably more familiar with this conflict than I am. I have however been picking up some of the nuances of the Nippon-Sino relationship in general though. One country is really as bad as the other. China refuses to acknowledge any progress that Japan has made post-1945 and Japan refuses to remember anything that happened pre-1945.
One of the root causes of the current protest isn't so much over the fact that Japan is being considered as a permanent council member but rather over the fact that Japan is releasing a new history textbook in its schools that whitewashes the crimes that were commited by Japan in the early half of the 20th century.

While China certainly has a right to be upset over this, I suspect that the government's reasons for promoting and encouraging this prostest are less than honest. In order for a communist government to stay popular it needs to stoke the fires of nationalism. In order to create a nationalistic fervour you need an enemy and Japan's past and it's inability to accept responsibility for the things it did makes it an easy target.

I think things will probably get worse before they get better. I can't understand why this problem seems to be contained to the Pacific. I think that most of Europe has forgiven and forgot Germany and they played a big part in two World Wars. It's interesting how the conflict always filters down into everyday situations. I was teaching one class to a student about talking about music. At the end of every class there's some kind of roleplay or activity to bring the whole lesson together. At the end of this particular class the activity was to choose a statement about music and explain whether she agreed with it and why. She chose 'Music has the power to change the world.' When I asked her why she believed this she told me about how Korean pop music is so popular in Japan right now and it gives the two countries an opportunity to interact and share common interests. So maybe there is still some hope left.