Japan's modernization following the Meiji reforms cannot be described as sheer westernization. While the structure of many institutions - including the army, navy, parliament, civil code, education system - were imported from the West, the spirit remained Japanese. Nevertheless, for the Chinese and Koreans, Japan's behavior and policies through the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries were those of a "Western" industrialized imperialist power - in fact, even worse.
Korea was brutally colonized economically, politically, militarily and culturally. The sexual enslavement of an estimated 100,000 Korean women during World War II stands out as a heinous crime against humanity. Likewise in China, Japan was responsible for the Nanjing massacre, and the army's Unit 731 carried out lethal biological and chemical experimentation on prisoners, as well as vivisection, with an overall estimated toll of up to 20 million civilian Chinese casualties.
In the first half of the 20th century, Japan allied with two Western powers: Imperial Britain, 1902 to1922, and Nazi Germany, 1938 to 1944. Since 1952, it formed an alliance with the United States. Japan had no alliance, or, for that matter, a close relationship with an Asian nation.
To make amends for Japan's World War Two aggression, the late Japanese emperor Hirohito made state visits to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States, but not to a single Asian nation, let alone to those that suffered the most, China and Korea. Hirohito's son Akihito is due to visit India in November. This is fine, but relations between Japan and India throughout history have been distant, and there are no burning and potentially conflicting issues as those between Japan and its immediate Asian neighbors, China and Korea. In awarding the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo, the International Olympics Committee seemingly assumed that in the course of the years ahead, war won't break out in Northeast Asia. In keeping with the Olympic ideals, maybe the hope was that the games could ensure peace. Perhaps - but for that, action is required from Japan. For the moment, Japan may not be at war with its neighbors, but it's certainly not at peace. The wounds of war and humiliation have not healed and continue to fester, in turn exacerbated by territorial disputes and irresponsible hawkish language from Japanese leaders.
To achieve peace, as Europe learned, bold steps are necessary. The Franco-German post-war rapprochement is a model, illustrated, among other images, by former French President François Mitterrand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl holding hands on 22 September 1984 in Douaumont cemetery in Verdun, where the remains of 150,000 French soldiers rest from one of the bloodiest battles of the first world war. On 4 September, at Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of the worst Nazi massacre of civilians conducted on French soil, French President François Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck held hands, along with one of the three survivors, Jean-Marcel Darthout.
On his way to making his state visit to New Delhi, Emperor Akihito should stop first in Seoul, where he could meditate and hold hands with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in front of the monument to the memory of the Korean sex slaves, with one or more of the survivors. From Seoul, he could fly to Nanjing and undertake a similar exercise with Chinese President Xi Jinping in front of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.
These simple acts could turn the pages of an atrocious history of conflict between Japan and its neighbors, and in so doing, Japan could "re-enter" Asia as a force for peace. The 2020 Olympic Games may then mark a magnificent historical turning point, engendering great hope for the Asian Century.
