Opinion | The revisionism of Abe Shinzo
By Tom Fowdy
Last week the world witnessed the brutal murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who was shot whilst giving a speech by lone gunman Tetsuya Yamagami, a former Navy sailor who had made a self-improvised gun. The sudden and shocking manner of the killing predictably created an outpouring of tributes towards Abe, which whilst including China's Xi Jinping, also included a chorus of western leaders who took the opportunity to praise his political legacy. This particular aspect quickly unleashed an extremely divisive climate across social media wherein some Chinese netizens, as well as Koreans, were accused of unapologetically celebrating or glorifying his demise.
Whilst Abe's murder is unquestionably horrific, his legacy will remain controversial and decisive. That is because to countries who were on the receiving end of Japan's (unatoned) Imperial legacy, Abe Shinzo, as a right-wing populist, stood as a staunch apologist and historical revisionist of such who's primary political objective was to advocate the remilitarization of the country. Whilst it is always important to remain dignified in the face of someone's passing, not least when they are murdered in cold blood, the western portrayal of Abe Shinzo as an unfettered champion of democracy and "the Indo-Pacific" is itself an act of revisionism which glosses over the longstanding sensitivities he sought to trample on.
When the allies defeated Germany in World War II, the Nazi regime was dismantled and its leaders were put on trial for crimes against humanity. The legacy of Nuremberg and Denazification, as to which it was called, not only stood to historically disgrace Nazism as an ideology but also was successful in purging it from the German public consciousness and provoking a sense of national atonement. The same cannot be said about Japan. Whilst Post-war Germany was rebuilt from scratch and split between the allies, the Empire of Japan surrendered unilaterally to the United States, whom for geopolitical reasons, sought to keep the Soviet Union out of the picture in the view of the emerging Cold War and quickly sought to reshape Japan into a launchpad for maintaining hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.
Because of this, the United States did not vigorously purge the Imperial Japanese state in the manner which the allies had done to Germany, but simply realigned the same system under new terms and conditions. Hirohito was allowed to continue as Emperor, and the same elites and middle classes who had led the Imperial regime were simply reintegrated into the new state. Apart from the infamous photo of Hirohito standing next to Douglas MacArthur, illustrating who was now in charge, there was no national "coming to terms" with Japan's crimes. Whilst in Europe, the relationship between Germany, France and others was built completely anew, allowing past misdeeds to be reconciled, in Asia old wounds effectively remained unhealed as "justice" for Japan's atrocities was never clinched.
It is on this premise that post-war Japan, whilst constitutionally Pacifist, rekindled itself on a legacy of abject denial of the past, one which of course was enabled by the west. The rise of China, as well as North Korea's nuclear weapons program, have since the turn of the 21st century, given way to even greater revisionism in the form of pressures to modify its post-war constitution, of which figures such as Abe Shinzo have been the primary cheerleaders of. In doing so, the west has been happy to overlook the sordid ultranationalism and historical sensitivities of such figures in the view to "reframing" Abe and similar individuals as noble champions of democracy, seeing Japan as a critical geopolitical counterweight to Beijing.
But Abe's true outlook should not be glossed over, which also included unbridled antagonism towards "follow democracies" such as South Korea. In 2019, in response to a South Korean court ruling that Japan owed compensation for wartime forced Labour practices, Abe responded by unleashing a nationalist confrontation that involved curbing high-tech semiconductor exports to Seoul, provoking an all-out boycott of Japanese products in South Korea. China has more reasons to dislike him, with Abe having deliberately escalated the Diaoyu Islands dispute in 2012 (an issue always falsely framed in the form of Chinese expansionism) and provoking anti-Japanese riots throughout China.
Given such, everything should be understood in its true context. Abe Shinzo's murder was ultimately disturbing, traumatic and uncalled for. Whilst it is also inevitable that tributes would follow portraying him in a favorable light, it also must be said that this depiction of his life and legacy, especially by western politicians, is inherently if not deliberately misleading. The Chinese and Korean people who reacted jubilantly to his death are not doing so out of sheer malice, moral bankruptcy or a lack of compassion, but because of the longstanding sensitivities of which Abe devoted his life to trampling on. These people are not living under the Anglosphere's wilful ignorance of "history no longer matters" but were ultimately under illusions about what Abe Shinzo stood for. The west doesn't have a right to point fingers at them over this.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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