Japan Enjoying Controversy over Goguryo History

With the Korean and Chinese contention over Goguryo deepening, some Japanese nationalists are becoming delighted. The majority of current Japanese historians considers Goguryo as an ancient state of the Korean Han people and is negative toward China’s attempt to distort history. Nevertheless, Japanese ultra-nationalists hold a different view.

These ultra-nationalists published history-distorting textbooks a few years ago, describing Japan’s invasion of Asia as Japan’s advance, but received strong criticism from Korea, China and some Japanese non-governmental groups and currently are relatively quiet. The situation has now changed with Korea and China confronting over Goguryo, with the Japanese ultra-nationalists justifying their distorted textbooks saying, “It is only natural to record history in the perspective of the country accounting for it.”

The August 16 editorial of the Sankei Shimbun titled “Goguryo Controversy – Everybody is Serious about History” represents the arguments of some of the ultra-nationalists.

The editorial interpreted, “It seems that China places an absolute value over its current territory and is trying to include all the history that occurred in its territory as its own, hence to reaffirm the grandeur and greatness of China.” Furthermore, the editorial analyzed that behind the Goguryo controversy was China’s expansionism, sense of grandeur, or nationalism which was bred with confidence earned through economic development.

In the editorial’s view, Korea could not stand still against China’s acts of denying Korean national history because Korea considered Goguryo, which expanded into the Chinese mainland and fought against the Chinese Soo and Tang Dynasties, as a source of national pride.

“China seems to want to change history in order to hold its control over minorities, such as Tibet, and that is why China is so adamant like Korea when it comes to history.” The article continued, “There are voices in Japan calling for writing Japanese history considering Korea’s disposition. But it is obvious to write Japanese history in the perspective of Japan.”

The editorial concluded, “The moral of the Korea-China history dispute is that Japan needs ‘Japanese History by Japanese’,” and hence supporting the history-distorting textbooks published by Japanese ultra-nationalists.

Hun-Joo Cho hanscho@donga.com