APPLETON, WIS. — The former Japanese ambassador to the United States headlines a three-day conference Oct. 13-15 at Lawrence University that will explore current social issues as well as traditional Japanese culture.
Takakazu Kuriyama will be the first of three keynote speakers at the “Japan in Transition” conference. Ambassador Kuriyama will deliver the address “Japan and the United States: The Alliance in Evolution” Friday, Oct. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Wriston Art Center.
On Saturday, Oct. 14, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, professor of history at York University in Toronto, presents “A Sordid Squabble: The ‘Rape of Nanking’ in Sino Japanense Relations” at 7:30 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102.
Michael Schneider, associate professor of history and co-director of the Center for Global Studies at Knox College, concludes the conference with “Does Every Princess Need a Prince?: Navigating Japan’s Imperial Succession Debate” Sunday, Oct. 15 at 10:45 a.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. All three lectures are free and open to the public.
Late last month, Shinzo Abe was easily elected Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister, succeeding Junichiro Koizumi. Abe, 52, was elected on a platform that looks to strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance, improve relations with China and revise the country’s pacifist constitution to allow Japan’s military more flexibility in coming to the aid of an ally under attack or contributing to international peacekeeping operations.
“Japan is at a very interesting transitional time in its history, grappling with several important issues these days,” said Yoko Nagase, assistant professor of economics at Lawrence, who organized the conference. “We’re excited to have three distinguished speakers joining us for this conference to share their insights on these crucial topics facing Japanese leaders as well as Japanese society as a whole. While the United States and Japan have long shared a special relationship, much of Japanese culture remains a mystery to most Americans. Our speakers’ reflections will provide some valuable insights into one of our most important allies.
“I’m also hoping this conference will help sustain the momentum we’ve established for our Japanese program during the past five years,” Nagase added. “Thanks to a generous grant in 2001 from the Freeman Foundation, we’ve been able to raise significantly the Lawrence community’s interest in Japan, primarily through a series of trips by students and faculty to Japan. This conference can only help strengthen our Japanese presence on campus and hopefully in the greater Fox Cities community as well.”
In the conference’s opening address, Kuriyama will discuss how the rise in nationalism and a demographic shift of the country’s population from fewer children to more elderly citizens is impacting the Japanese view of foreign policy. He also will explain how globalization and multi-polarization are forcing adjustments to the U.S.- Japan alliance. According to Kuriyama, as a result of those two forces, the bilateral alliance alone does not protect Japan’s interests. Reconciliation with its neighbors and building a new regional order in the Asia-Pacific are becoming the priority issues for Japan’s foreign policy.
Kuriyama, whose father was a justice on Japan’s Supreme Court, enjoyed a distinguished foreign service career that spanned more than 40 years. His diplomatic appointments included serving as Japan’s vice minister for foreign affairs, ambassador to Malaysia, director general of the North American Affairs Bureau and counselor to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. In 1992 he was named ambassador to the United States, a position he held until 1996. Since leaving public service, he has taught courses on international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University.
Kuriyama has ties to Lawrence that span more than 50 years. He attended Lawrence during the 1954-55 academic year as a special student in an overseas study program sponsored by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. He also spent five weeks in the fall of 2000 as Lawrence’s Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professor, team-teaching the course “The Postwar Japanese-American Relationship.” A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Kuriyama was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Lawrence in 1993.
In the conference’s second address, Wakabayashi will examine the claims and counter claims of what occurred during the assault on Nanking, China by invading Japanese troops and the lasting impact the massacre has had on relations between the two countries for more than 60 years. He also will offer suggestions on how both sides can restore civility and reason to their dialogue.
The “Rape of Nanking,” in which tens of thousands were massacred and several thousand were raped, remained largely a non-issue after World War II for several reasons. The Chinese directed most of their wrath at fellow Chinese collaborators and class enemies as well at the United States during the Cold War, rather than at the Japanese people. In Japan, historians acknowledged that 42,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed at Nanking — a figure and break-down that was largely accepted by Chinese officials.
That civility ended dramatically, however, in the 1980s, when a “sordid squabble” broke out between the two countries. The Chinese insisted that 340,000 innocent civilians, excluding soldiers, were massacred while the Japanese claimed any such mega-massacre was an “illusion.”
The “squabble” over Nanking is tied to ongoing tensions associated with Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, the controversial Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the spirits of soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Japanese emperor.
The Chinese view Nanking as their Auschwitz and consider Japanese atrocities akin to the Holocaust. Their victim toll is sacrosanct like that of the six million Jews and they consider official Japanese visits to Yasukuni Shrine as the equivalent to worshipping the graves of Hitler and Himmler.
Wakabayashi is the author of two books, “Japanese Loyalism Reconstrued” and “Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan.” He also served as editor of the books “Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952” and “Modern Japanese Thought.” He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Schneider will conclude the conference with an examination of how the intersecting issues of gender, politics, foreign policy and constitutional revision have all conspired to throw Japan into a national debate on imperial succession.
When the Crown Princess and Prince gave birth to a first-child daughter in 2001, it left Japan without a legally-mandated male successor to the throne beyond the reigning Crown Prince and launched a firestorm of controversy over imperial succession. While the subsequent birth in early September, 2006, of a male child to the Crown Prince’s brother and his wife provided a legal successor to the throne, it did little to quell the debate.
Among the most prominent solutions to resolve the succession quandary was a proposal, endorsed by then-Prime Minister Koizumi, that would allow female succession to the Japanese throne. That proposal has in turn fueled additional discussions over the role of women in Japanese national politics.
Schneider, a scholar on Japanese culture and history, joined the Knox faculty in 1992. He has written extensively on Japanese history and serves as an editor of the Journal of American East Asian Relations. He spent two years (2000-02) as a visiting scholar at Tokyo’s Waseda University and was interviewed by ABC News for a story on Japanese imperial families. He earned his Ph.D. in modern Japanese and international history from the University of Chicago.
In conjunction with the “Japan in Transition” conference, the exhibit “Asian Arts from Lawrence University’s Permanent Collection,” featuring Japanese and Chinese arts from the 17th to 20th centuries, including woodblock prints by noted 19th-century Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige, will be held in the Leech Gallery of the Wriston Art Center.
Support for Lawrence’s sponsorship of the conference was provided by the Kikkoman Foundation, the Japan Study, the Japan Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.
