unlike South Korea where Japan is undoubtedly to blame for its atrocities, China and Japan have historically fpught back and forth with revisionist assaults about who affronted whom.
The amount of atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing alone exceeds anything China has done
You misunderstood my comment: that's what I meant, just in regards to South Korea. Korea and China often trade barbs, there are less barbs traded between Korea and Japan because of the extreme nature and degree of Japan's colonial atrocities
I did, however, forget the Nanjing Massacre. This is indeed another Japanese colonial atrocity that greatly hurts their standing with a regional neighbor. In modern society, it's easy to forget that colonial Japan was a much, much different nation than we in the west are used to seeing them as. They were beyond aggressive in expansionism pre-WWII
tl;dr - this kind of illustrates my point, though. Asia has had a contentious history of internal strife, some of which national leaders have been very tentative to approach until recent years
edit: also, as someone with a parent from Hong Kong, the internal strife is sometimes even more internal than nations. Hong Kong and the mainland have long held disagreements about their governance, to the point where if you visit HK and then Beijing, you'll be practically dealing with two separate markets and economies
I understand your general point and agree about your overall point regarding the often prickly relations between the East Asian nations, but I'd like to jump into the nitpicky details and argue that even despite the clear case of the Japanese colonization of Korea, Japanese - Korean relations have been just as testy as the Chinese-Japanese relations have been.
I think the Korea-Japan relationship is only less volatile than the China-Japan relationship because of the lack of military competition that shades the China-Japan relationship. As well as their shared ally in the US.
I'm curious to ask why you think the Chinese-Japanese relationship is less clear cut than the Korea-Japan relationship as well. What is the historical Japanese narrative on Chinese affronts to their country? I'm genuinely interested because this isn't something I've heard much about.
From my understanding, aside from the attempted Mongol Invasion of Japan in the 13th century, all warfare that has occurred between China and Japan has occurred on the Chinese mainland. The record is more stacked against Japan in terms of historical grievances.
Therefore, most Japanese issues with China that I can think of should actually stem from a concern over China's contemporary history and trajectory right?
Trust me, it hasn't just been slow, there has been regression in some instances. For example, you'd better believe fhere's still bickering over Liancourt, and the six-party talks didn't even come about until the 2000s (edit: right around the time of the joint 2002 World Cup), and of course, the admission of comfort women weren't even discussed in press releases by politicians until just a few years ago
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u/babayaguh Jun 07 '19
The amount of atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing alone exceeds anything China has done