Willkommen | Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage · /01"+/2 3 4 5 6 789:8&)8)**;4 5 < 1 789898))8)= Eckert. Expertise Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung Band

Eckhardt Fuchs / Tokushi Kasahara / Sven Saaler (eds.): A New Modern History of East Asia (Vol. 1)

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Eckert. ExpertiseGeorg-Eckert-Institut für internationaleSchulbuchforschung

Band 7

Herausgegeben von

Eckhardt Fuchs

Redaktion

Ralf Kasper und

Wendy Anne Kopisch




Eckhardt Fuchs / Tokushi Kasahara /Sven Saaler (eds.)

A New Modern History of East Asia

Volume 1

Edited by the Trilateral China-Japan-Korea History TextbookEditorial Committee

Translated by Maya Ileto and Roger Prior

With 70 figures

V&R unipress




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Contents

List of Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Preface to the English Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Preface of the Trilateral China-Japan-Korea History TextbookEditorial Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Foreword to the English Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Note on Transliteration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 1: The Impact of the West and the Destabilization of theTraditional Order in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371. Political Transformations and Regional Order in East Asia in theSeventeenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2. Aggression of the Western Powers in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . 513. East Asia’s Reaction to the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634. The Destabilization of the Regional Order in East Asia . . . . . . 70Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86




Chapter 2: The First Sino-Japanese War and the Dissolution of theTraditional Order in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 871. Transformations in East Asia during the 1880s and the KoreanProblem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

2. The First Sino-Japanese War, 1894–95 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993. The Treaty of Shimonoseki and Relations between China, Japan,and Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Chapter 3: The Russo-Japanese War and the Struggle forHegemony in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1291. Rivalries among the Powers in East Asia after the FirstSino-Japanese War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

2. Causes and Outcomes of the Russo-Japanese War . . . . . . . . . 1393. The Treaty of Portsmouth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1504. Major Transformations in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Chapter 4: The First World War and the Washington System . . . . 1731. The First World War and the Twenty-One Demands . . . . . . . 1742. The End of the Great War, Nationalist Movements in East Asia,and the Continuation of the Siberian Intervention . . . . . . . . . 186

3. The Formation and Decline of the Washington System . . . . . . 197Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Chapter 5: East Asia and Japan’s War of Aggression . . . . . . . . . 2191. Japan’s Invasion of Manchuria and the International Response . 2202. All-Out War between Japan and China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2323. The Second World War and the Asia-Pacific War . . . . . . . . . 2434. East Asia at the End of the Asia-Pacific War . . . . . . . . . . . . 252Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Chapter 6: The Formation of the Cold War System and itsInfluence on East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2671. US and USSR Postwar Policies in East Asia and Changes in Japan 2682. The Chinese Revolution and the Escalation of the Cold War . . . 277

Contents6


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3. Partition and War on the Korean Peninsula . . . . . . . . . . . . 2854. Intensification of the Cold War and the Non-Aligned Movement . 295Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Chapter 7: Transformations in the Cold War System in East Asia . . 3131. Deepening of Sino-Soviet Hostility and Transformations in theEast Asian Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

2. Revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty and the Conclusion ofthe Japan-South Korea Treaty on Basic Relations . . . . . . . . . 322

3. The Vietnam War and East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3324. Detente and Changes in Relations between China, Japan, andSouth Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Chapter 8: East Asia after the End of the Cold War . . . . . . . . . . 3611. East Asia and the End of the Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3622. Globalization and Political Transformation in East Asia . . . . . 3733. Economic Cooperation and Civil Interaction in East Asia . . . . . 3874. Tasks for Peacebuilding in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

The Authors of this Book / Members of the TrilateralChina-Japan-Korea History Textbook Editorial Committee . . . . . 409

Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

Place Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Contents 7









List of Tables and Figures

Figure 1: Circulation of silver in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Figure 2: Trade factories in eighteenth-century Canton. Courtesy of the KoreanTextbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 3: The First and Second Opium Wars.

Figure 4: Article about Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan from theIllustrated London News. Source: private collection.

Figure 5: The Western Powers’ encroachment into the Korean peninsula.

Figure 6: A weapons factory in Nanjing founded in 1865. Courtesy of the KoreanTextbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 7: The key figures in the Iwakura Mission. Source: Charles Lanmen,The Japanese in America (1872), courtesy of Yamaguchi PrefecturalArchives.

Figure 8: Japanese troops during the invasion of Taiwan. Source: Saigo totoku toKabayama Sukenori (1936).

Figure 9: The Battle of Ganghwa. Source: Meiji taiheiki, vol. 11/1 (1876).

Figure 10: The central actors of the Gapsin Coup. Courtesy of the Korean Text-book Editorial Committee.

Figure 11: Image of the conference held to revise the unequal treaties. ForeignMinister Inoue Kaoru is announcing Japan’s policy to various foreignambassadors. Source: Monbusho, Koto shogaku kokushi, gekan, 1929,p. 124.




Figure 12: “Fishing,” by Georges Bigot, in Tobae, February 15, 1887. Source: pri-vate collection.

Figure 13: The leader of theDonghak peasant revolution, JeonBong-jun. Courtesyof the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 14: The Sino-Japanese War.

Figure 15: The massacre at Lushun (Port Arthur), as photographed by CountKamei Koreaki. Source: Meiji 27–8nen sen’eki shashincho (1907).

Figure 16: The signing of the Shimonoseki Treaty. Courtesy of the Korean Text-book Editorial Committee.

Figure 17: “Major Assault at Keelung, Taiwan,”woodblock print by Kokuni Masa.

Figure 18: China under threat of division. Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Edi-torial Committee.

Figure 19: The Independent (Hangul version and English version)

Figure 20: The signing of the Boxer Protocol and the signatures on the document.Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 21: The Russo-Japanese War.

Figure 22: Russo-Japanese tug-of-war. Courtesy of the Korean Textbook EditorialCommittee.

Figure 23: A Korean mobilized to transport Japanese military goods. Courtesy ofthe Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 24: Commemorative postcard marking the conclusion of the Treaty ofPortsmouth. Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 25: The Righteous Militias Movement fought against the Japanese army.Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 26: The Revolution of 1911 in China. Courtesy of the Chinese TextbookEditorial Committee.

Figure 27: Poster announcing the birth of the Republic of China, with Sun Yat-sen.Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

List of Tables and Figures10





Figure 28: Representatives of China and Japan signing various treaties as a resultof the Twenty-One Demands of May 1915. Source: private collection.

Figure 29: Lenin giving a speech during the October Revolution in Russia. Source:private collection.

Figure 30: The Siberian Intervention: Japanese troops parading in Vladivostok.Source: private collection.

Figure 31: The heads of government of the countries participating in the ParisPeace. Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 32: March First Independence Movement. Source: Dong-A Ilbo.

Figure 33: May Fourth Movement. Source: private collection.

Figure 34: The Washington Conference. Source: private collection.

Figure 35: The inaugural issue of the Comintern’s bulletin, The CommunistInternational (German-language edition). Source: private collection.

Figure 36: The Northern Expedition.

Figure 37: The Government-General of Korea. Courtesy of the Korean TextbookEditorial Committee.

Figure 38: The Government-General of Taiwan. Courtesy of the Korean TextbookEditorial Committee.

Figure 39: The Lytton Commission. Source: private collection.

Figure 40: The Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army and a representativeof “Manchukuo” sign the Japan-Manchukuo Protocol. Source: privatecollection.

Figure 41: Tanks of the Imperial Japanese Army enter Nanjing. Source: privatecollection.

Figure 42: The Battle at the Pingxingguan Pass (September 25, 1937). Courtesy ofthe Chinese Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 43: The Korean Liberation Army, founded in Chongqing in 1940. Courtesyof the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

List of Tables and Figures 11





Figure 44: Children in bases of anti-Japanese resistance in Northern China.Courtesy of the Chinese Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 45: The surprise attack by the Japanese Navy’s air force on Pearl Harbor inHawaii, the base for America’s Pacific Fleet. The battleshipUSSArizonais on fire. Courtesy of Mainichi Shinbun.

Figure 46: Delegates at the Greater East Asian Conference held in November 1943.Courtesy of Mainichi Shinbun.

Figure 47: The Theater of the Asia-Pacific War.

Figure 48: The mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki onAugust 9, 1945. Courtesy of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

Figure 49: Mamoru Shigemitsu, the Japanese foreign minister, signing the sur-render instrument aboard the American battleship USS Missouri,Tokyo Bay, on September 2, 1945. Source: World War II Database/United States National Archives.

Figure 50: The outcomes of the war crimes trials for Class A, B, and C warcriminals.

Figure 51: Prisoners freed from Sodaemon Prison in Seoul celebrate on LiberationDay. Courtesy of the Korean Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 52: Artillery attack by the UN army during the KoreanWar. Source: privatecollection.

Figure 53: The Development of the Korean War.

Figure 54: The signing ceremony for the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Courtesy ofKyodo News Agency.

Figure 55: Propaganda poster advertising the Great Leap Forward in China.Courtesy of the Chinese Textbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 56: The Bandung Conference. Courtesy of the Chinese Textbook EditorialCommittee.

Figure 57: Red Guards from all over the country assemble on Tiananmen Squarein Beijing during the Cultural Revolution to see Mao Zedong. Courtesyof the Chinese Textbook Editorial Committee.

List of Tables and Figures12





Figure 58: Anti-Security Treaty demonstrations surround the Japanese Diet.Courtesy of Asahi Shinbun.

Figure 59: Troop strength of nations involved in the Vietnam War.

Figure 60: American B-52s taking off fromKadenaAirbase inOkinawa, the largestUS military base in the Far East. Courtesy of Mainichi Shinbun.

Figure 61: Meeting between Nixon and Mao Zedong. Courtesy of the ChineseTextbook Editorial Committee.

Figure 62: Demonstrations by citizens of East Germany demanding democracy inthe immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall (Alexanderplatz,Berlin, November 19, 1989). Courtesy of Yomiuri Shinbun.

Figure 63: Military alliances and security in East Asia.

Figure 64: Meeting between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang (2000).Courtesy of Kyodo News Agency.

Figure 65: Regional Organizations in East Asia.

Figure 66: Expanding Sino-Japanese-Korean Exchange.

Figure 67: The border between North Korea and South Korea at Panmunjom.Courtesy of Ishikawa Bunyo.

Figure 68: Deployment of U.S. troops stationed in East Asia to Southeast Asia andthe Middle East.

Figure 69: Heixiazi Island in the Heilongjiang (Amur River) on the Sino-Russianborder.

Figure 70: The East Asia Summit Conference held in Bali, Indonesia, in November2011. Courtesy of the Cabinet Office (Japan).

List of Tables and Figures 13








Preface to the English Edition

International textbook activities first emerged within the context of theinternational peace movement at the end of the 19th century. It was, how-ever, only after the First WorldWar that these activities were taken upmorecomprehensively, both by the League of Nations and by other internationalorganizations. It was then that the role played by education in fostering apeaceful coexistence of nations, the essential concept at the heart of peaceeducation, became a more widespread aspect of the discourse in nationaland international contexts than hitherto imagined. It also soon becameclear, however, that the topic of textbook revision was one of the mostsensitive areas of international cooperation, addressing not only issuesunderlying political rivalries, but also touched upon an area traditionallydealt with under the exclusive national authority of individual states. Thevery idea that leading historians be permitted to develop a uniform inter-national history textbook, something that had been proposed as early as thebeginning of the 1930s, was met with abhorrence, not only by nationalschool authorities but was also seen by many history scholars as en-croaching upon the freedom of research and teaching methodologies. Re-vising national textbooks in accordance with specifically defined criteriaappeared, however, to be more acceptable. This would often include suchmeasures as excluding chapters of military or nationalistic content, forinstance.

The revision of textbooks therefore became the main strand of interna-tional textbook activities after 1945. International organizations such asUNESCO and the Council of Europe but also national institutions such asthe Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research have been




major actors in this field up to the present day. They have developedhandbooks and guidelines, and coordinated numerous international text-book commissions and projects. The Franco-German Textbook Commis-sion, founded in 1951, is one of the most successful examples of such long-term activities.

Whereas the revision of textbooks dominated the international debateformost of the ColdWar era, over the course of the past decades the focus oftextbook activities has shifted away from the issue of revising textbookstowards strategies of how to improve them with regard to new challengessocieties are facing today, such as diversity, human rights, sustainable de-velopment, or gender equality. In addition, the rise of new nationalism andthe advent of what is sometimes called the “postfactual age” have led to anew series of controversies surrounding textbooks, particularly historybooks. These take place within a society or across national borders andemphasize issues of neo-national tradition, the protection of societies’ self-legitimisation, the construction of new identities, and the glorification andmythologization of history. Such controversies transcend the level of aca-demic debate to resonate with wide sections of society and frequently giverise to heated discussion.

However, the idea of producing common or shared (history) textbooks –between two or even more countries – has remained an important part ofcross-national textbook activities, despite the initial strong opposition fromthe 1930s. This is especially true of regions where there has not yet been areconciliation process regarding the history or histories of different countrieswhich may be shared yet highly controversial. There have been successfulattempts to create common textbooks. One example is Das europäische Ge-schichtsbuch (European History), which was written by 14 authors from 13European countries, published in 1992 and translated into more than 20languages.1Another example is the Franco-German history textbook that waspublished in three volumes between 2006 and 2012. This book has beentranslated into Japanese and Korean and is considered a “master copy”,especially for joint textbook activities in East Asia. The Israeli-Palestiniantextbook constitutes a further example. The Georg Eckert Institute has been

1 Frédéric Delouche (ed.), Das europäische Geschichtsbuch. Von den Anfängen bis heute[1992], new revised and extended edition (Stuttgart 1998).

Preface to the English Edition16





involved in almost all of these joint textbook initiatives. More recently it hasbegun the coordination of a joint German-Polish History Textbook, the firsttwo volumes of which were published in 2016/17 and will encompass fourvolumes in total. Equally noteworthy is the common history of the Balkanregion (Joint History Project), currently being written by historians from adozen Balkan states. Conflicts have characterized the history of the region,from the prehistory of World War I to the civil war following the dis-integration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. However, historians have demon-strated that it is possible to share and accept each other’s views and present acommon history, which is now freely accessible in eleven languages as anonline publication. The Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in South-east Europe, where the project is based, was awarded the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Human Rights Award in 2013, and confidently refers to the projecttoday as the “gold standard in multi-perspective history teaching”.2

It is difficult to measure the impact of these shared textbooks on conflictresolution, reconciliation and multiperspectivity in the history classroombecause they all have a different status; some are officially approved text-bookswhile others are supplementary teachingmaterial or textbooks for theprivate sector, etc. However, they all reflect the attempt to overcome cross-national controversies surrounding history.

In East Asia, debates on the interpretation of the modern history of theregion continue to affect international relations today, and history text-books constitute a principal “battlefield” of these controversies. While thesecond half of the twentieth century saw constant improvement of historyeducation in East Asia – progress in terms of reducing divergences in his-torical interpretations while expanding the scope of transnational dia-logue – the emergence of historical revisionism, in Japan since the 1990s, inKorea since the 2000s, and in China since the 2010s, has led to an escalationof the situation rather than to a deepening of reconciliation. While thehistory textbook controversy received widespread attention in the 1980sand 1990s, in the 2000s experts and politicians began to speak of a “historyproblem” in East Asia. Since 2014, publications have increasingly referred to“history wars”, testifying to an escalation of the rhetoric on all sides.

2 See http://cdrsee.org/projects/education-projects/joint-history-project, accessed Au-gust 2017.

Preface to the English Edition 17


http://cdrsee.org/projects/education-projects/joint-history-project

http://cdrsee.org/projects/education-projects/joint-history-project




Before this background, the significance of efforts on the part of his-torians, political scientists, educators and concerned citizens to engage intrans-border dialogue regarding the history of the East Asian region, todeepen their mutual understanding regarding their shared past, and toformulate a shared historical consciousness have grown significantly inimportance. This book, the “New History of East Asia”, is a result of theseefforts. Its key message is that, while some differences might remain, acommon broad understanding regarding the history of East Asia betweencountries, but also between individuals of different national backgroundscan be brought about. The book is a major contribution to efforts towardsreconciliation in the region. As the first English-language textbook on thehistory of East Asia written by scholars from East Asia, it is also highlyrecommended for use in an anglophone teaching environment.

Chinese-Japanese-Korean efforts to produce a common textbook orteaching material go back to the 1980s, when the history textbook con-troversy first became a major international issue in East Asia. While gov-ernment initiatives to present a common understanding of the past werehampered by political considerations, communication between establishedhistorians, primarily of an academic nature, proved to be highly fruitful.Books written by multinational groups of historians and educators werepublished from the 1990s onwards, culminating in the completion of AHistory to Open the Future in 2005, which has been available in English as ane-book since 2015.3 While the book was a first step on the path to thecreation of a common, or at least mutual, understanding of the East Asianpast that transcends narrow nation-centered histories, the authors realizedthat there was still much to be done. Continued exchanges resulted in theplan to write a two-volume “History of Modern East Asia”, which waseventually published in 2012 in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. We decidedthat this work deserved to be presented to an English-speaking audience,began to translate and edit the text in 2013, and completed the work on thisproject in late 2016.

3 The China-Japan-Korea History Textbook Tri-National Committee (ed.), A History toOpen the Future: Modern East Asian History and Regional Reconciliation (Honolulu:School of Pacific andAsian Studies, University of Hawai’i atManoa, 2015). An Esperantoversion was published in 2014.






The book is a milestone in the process of Chinese, Japanese and Koreanhistorians working towards the formulation of a shared understanding ofthe past of the East Asian region. While it may seem natural that historianswould engage in this kind of dialogue, in an age of increasing internation-alization of research and of deepening academic networks, the fact thatcommon wisdom still holds that “national history” is limited to one nationpresents a major obstacle to this kind of transnational cooperation. Beforethis background, it is all the more important to demonstrate that transna-tional dialogue is possible and fruitful. The successful work of the partic-ipants in this project shows that an exclusive “Japanese”, “Chinese” or“Korean” view of the past is difficult to uphold, just as scientists of previouscenturies eventually had to admit that something like a “national biology”or “national physics” was simply not possible.4 Similarly, the history of awar, by definition a historical event in which at least two nations are in-volved, should not be written by only one or the other side; ideally it is asynthesis of multiple perspectives and of the analysis of multiple archivesources.

This academic and historical approach has been under attack in East Asiasince the 1990s, when “historical revisionism”, a movement led by politi-cians and some public intellectuals, but not supported by any influentialhistorians, emerged as an important force in public discourse. In Japan, themovement started with the foundation of the Committee for the Re-Ex-amination of History in the Liberal Democratic Party in 1993, but it is alsonot unknown in Korea and has recently gained strength in China.5 The book

4 These tendencies were certainly not rare in the nationalist nineteenth century, culmi-nating in the emergence of pseudo-sciences such as “racial studies,” but also remainedpopular in the twentieth century, when, for example, Austrian scholar Philipp Lenard(1862–1946) propagated the idea of “German physics.”

5 On historical revisionism in Japan, see Sven Saaler, Politics, Memory and Public Opinion(Munich: Iudicium, 2005); Sven Saaler, “Nationalism and History in ContemporaryJapan,” in Jeff Kingston (ed.), Asian Nationalisms Reconsidered (London: Routledge,2016), 172–185; on historical revisionism in China, see Gilbert Rozman, “HistoricalMemories and International Relations in Northeast Asia,” in Daniel Chirot, Gi-WookShin, and Daniel Sneider (eds),Memories of WorldWar II. European and Asian Legacies(Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2014), 211–233. See also thechapters in section IV of Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (eds), RoutledgeHandbook of Modern Japanese History (London: Routledge, 2018).






in hand is, amongst other things, an attempt to stem this wave of historicalrevisionism and to reconfirm the authority of history scholarship in dis-cussions about the past of the East Asian region. The authors show thatnarrowly framed explanations limited to the exploration of only one side ofthe story are not only academically questionable, but also pose a hindranceon the road to reconciliation and stability in the region.

Notwithstanding the general agreement regarding the importance ofconnecting historical understanding to reconciliation in the context of in-ternational relations, the chapter about the representation of the past in thepublic sphere in this volume was the most contested one. Historical re-visionism has been more successful than history scholarship in assuming akey role during discussions on historical memory. State-led ceremonies tocommemorate historical anniversaries, such as the end of the SecondWorldWar in East Asia, have been strongly characterized by one-dimensionalapproaches, and have often been described as offensive to neighboringstates. The resumption of visits by Japanese primeministers to the YasukuniShrine in Tokyo in the early twenty-first century, after a moratorium of 15years, has been seen as a provocative step because of the extremely narrowhistorical narrative represented by the shrine, which dramatically contra-dicts interpretations of Japan’s wartime past presented by academic his-torians. Similarly, China’s military “victory parade” to celebrate the 70thanniversary of the end of the “War against Japanese invasion” was seen ascounterproductive in terms of reconciliation. Chapter 8 of this book dealswith the display of historical memory in the public sphere and discussesissues of public memory and museums in East Asia. Heated discussioncharacterized the drafting of this chapter, as the reader will notice. Even-tually, the Korean version of this chapter was included in all versions of thisbook as a common draft could not be agreed upon. However, the Chineseand Japanese versions include comments by the authors from these twocountries, which were added to the unrevised draft. Since the book in handis a translation from the Japanese version, the editors decided to leave thetext as it is. For the subject matter is instructive in itself ; we believe that it istelling that, while historians can agree on shared narratives of the past, theyremain at odds with the often highly politicized question as to how history isrepresented in the public sphere.

During the process of translating the Japanese edition into English, ed-






iting the English version and confirming the contents with the authors fromJapan, China and Korea, the editors of this translation noticed, in additionto the fundamentally different chapter 8, subtle differences in several places.While this English translation is based on the Japanese version, we took intoaccount requests by the Korean and Chinese authors (in consultation withthe Japanese authors) to adjust the English text in cases where their versionsdiffered substantially from the Japanese edition. We also added footnotesaddressed to Western readers less familiar with the subject matter than theoriginally intended audience, and we dropped some footnotes included inthe Japanese version that seemed unnecessary for a Western audience.While the English translation of A History to Open the Future includes adetailed list of differences in the wording of the texts of the Japanese, theKorean and the Chinese versions, we have decided to leave it to researchersof history education and textbook issues to analyze the details and whatthese tell us about differences in historical consciousness prevalent in thesocieties of these three East Asian countries.

Overall, we hope that this publication will be of interest not only toscholars of history education and textbooks, but that it will also find its wayinto the classroom of courses on Modern East Asia, International Relationsor the histories of Japan, China and Korea. While in many countries historycontinues to be taught within a national framework, this book is also highlyrecommendable for classes in Modern Chinese History, Modern JapaneseHistory, and Modern Korean History, because it presents national historiesembedded in the framework of regional interaction and the global system ofinternational relations. The late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries,which constitute the principal timeframe of this textbook, were alreadycharacterized by intensive cross-border interaction. However, the need tounderstand such developments is even greater in the twenty-first century,an era in which forces of globalism and nationalism continue to influenceour daily lives, necessitating an understanding of the historical backgroundof contemporary developments.

Eckhardt Fuchs and Sven SaalerBraunschweig and Tokyo, August 2017









Preface of the Trilateral China-Japan-KoreaHistory Textbook Editorial Committee

As we embarked on the twenty-first century after a century of invasion, war,and conflict, we hoped it would be a century of reconciliation and peace.However, that expectation was soon betrayed by conflict, amongst otherthings, over historical consciousness and history textbooks. It was then thatwe decided to collaborate to compile and publish a history textbook thatcould replace those that were focused on our own national perspectives. Wefelt that to aim at a shared awareness and reconsideration of history bydeepening our mutual understanding was the best way to create a brighterfuture for East Asia.

In May 2005, we publishedMirai o hiraku rekishi (A History to Open theFuture), which was edited by a team of Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreanhistorians. The response to it exceeded our expectations by far, and over300,000 copies in total were sold in China, Japan, and Korea. It is used as ateaching resource in some junior high and high schools, as well as in someuniversities. It drew interest not only from within the three countries butalso from academic societies and history educators in America and Europe.People reacted positively to the efforts of researchers fromChina, Japan, andKorea to open the way to a future of peace, human rights, and democracybased on a shared historical consciousness.

However, the limits and problems in the process of compiling A Historyto Open the Future have also received attention. Some felt that there was notenough of a shared historical awareness in the book, and that too muchemphasis was placed on criticizing Japan’s mistakes rather than workingtoward a future peace. In particular, it was argued that, while the bookclaimed to look at history from the perspective of “East Asia,” in fact it did




nomore than look at the modern history of China, Japan, and Korea side byside, a critique that indicated a major problem of our undertaking.

At almost the same time as the publication of this book, a number ofdifferent efforts began in East Asia to try and resolve the conflict sur-rounding historical consciousness. Several history textbooks were pub-lished as a result of collaborative efforts between Japanese and Koreanscholars, increasing interest in the history of the neighboring countries.Exchange between historians also increased as they tried to solve the dis-putes over our history and reach a shared historical understanding, andfurther seminars and symposia were held on the theme of East Asian his-tory. “East Asian History” became an official high school course in Koreaand has been taught since 2012 after the necessary textbooks were devel-oped.

Growing interest from society, as well as the increasing exchanges re-garding history, greatly encouraged our efforts to create a shared historicalconsciousness, and we decided to take up the spirit of A History to Open theFuture andwork together oncemore tomake another new history textbook.

At an international conference held in Kyoto in November 2006, weagreed to collaborate and compile a new textbook. This new book wascreated to refine the content and our methodology in order to further anunderstanding of East Asia’s modern history and promote a sharedawareness of history. We also agreed to make it a stepping-stone towardwriting a complete, systematic history of modern East Asia that would formthe basis of a common historical awareness in China, Japan, and Korea.

InAHistory to Open the Future, the focus was placed on helping studentsand the general public to accurately understand East Asia’s modern history.Therefore, we structured the content around topics and facts that weredisputed by the three countries. In the new book, we emphasize a systematicunderstanding of East Asia’s modern history by linking the historical shiftsin the region with the general flow of world history. To achieve this, werefused to adopt a method in which members from each country undertookthewriting of their respective country’s history; insteadwe decided to divideup the writing by chapter, narrating history with an emphasis on thestructural changes. We focused our attention on understanding structuralchanges in the state systems of each of the three countries, as well as theirinterrelationships within the context of international relations in East Asia.

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Particular emphasis was placed on understanding them within the contextof their relations with Europe and America.

However, in a historical narrative concerned with only structuralchanges, the tangible figure of the common people who lived through themis likely to be buried; furthermore, there is a danger that it becomes difficultto see how individuals’ activities and interactions with each other affectedthe course of modern history. We therefore decided to create a secondvolume that looked at the daily lives and mutual exchanges of the people ofChina, Japan, and Korea. Thus, the first volume of the new book is achronological study of the structural changes in China, Japan, and Korea’smodern history, whereas the second volume examines the lives and inter-actions of the people, based on a variety of topics.

While research collaborations tend to emphasize continuous oppor-tunities for exchange among scholars and improved results, our effortsfocused on producing a joint work. Our aim was to make the fruits of ourcollaboration a shared social heritage rather than a simple mishmash ofindividual research. For this reason, the process consumed a great deal oftime and effort. Our work was supported by a consensus that we werecontributing to the development of an “East Asian Peace Community,” andfrom 2002 this was our driving force.

Today there is lively debate in the three countries regarding the “EastAsian community.” This was not the case when we began working togetherto create these resources for teaching history.Wewould like to see these twovolumes contribute to resolving the conflicts between the three countriesand establishing peace, because that is the path toward a future in which thepeople of East Asia can interact with each other, share culture, and exchangeideas.

We also hope that the readers of this work further discuss the problemsthat we have raised. We would like the book to play a role in fostering anawareness of history that looks to the future, helping people understand thehistory of East Asia and consider the history of countries different fromtheir own in a new light. It is with this sentiment that we have published thisnew two-volume textbook in China, Japan, and Korea. We hope that thisprovides an opportunity for renewed exchange and fruitful dialogue con-cerning historical awareness of East Asia’s past.

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Willkommen | Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage · /01"+/2 3 4 5 6 789:8&)8)**;4 5 < 1 789898))8)= Eckert. Expertise Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung Band