By Oh Young-jin
Assistant managing editor

History is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

Although many historians have argued that history repeats itself, few have explained why it is so, not because it is beyond explanation, but, more likely, because the reason is too obvious to need any further elaboration. The reason is human tendencies rarely change.

So with a generous dose of freedom to interpret history and on the basis of acknowledgement regarding a historical ellipsis, I surmise that the post-March 11 earthquake/tsunami Japan will pose a major challenge to the rest of the world in general and its neighbors, Korea and China, in particular. Not so much because of radiation leaks or fears of a China Syndrome, as because its politicians are unable to find an outlet for the colossal amount of frustration felt at national level as the result of the biggest peacetime disaster in the history of the island nation.

Now it’s not just Naoto Kan, the current prime minister, who is incapable of leading the country that has been suffering from the “lost decade” triggered by the burst of the economic bubble but characterized by the lethargy permeating into every nook and cranny of Japanese society. His predecessors, Yukio Hatoyama, Taro Aso, Yasuo Fukuda and Shinzo Abe, served one year or less in office, representing a Japan in an unprecedented flux.

Kan’s lack of leadership, a problem shared by Japan’s political leaders, is spotlighted because of his mishandling of the current nuclear crisis, well illustrated by the failure to contain radiation leaks from the Daiichi power plant in Fukushima.

Even deadlier than the radiation is a potential combination of the senility of Japan’s political establishment with the post-traumatic anger that is bound to haunt ordinary Japanese people.

Tens of thousands of Japanese have been killed, with many times more left having lost all that they had. This scale of disaster will never fail to spook the rest of the nation that has so far been spared from the immediate ravages of the catastrophe.

Simply put, orderly lines of Japanese, ostensibly little dazed by nature’s wrath, waiting for their turn in front of supermarkets, are descendents of angry mobs of soldiers who bayoneted their way through China, Korea and the rest of Asia less than 100 years ago.

It remains to be seen how successfully Japan will grapple with the aftermath. Depending on a given development, the rest of the world may have to intervene not just to help Japan recover but guide it away from a trajectory that in the past deviated to a path of ultra-nationalism and brought a devastating war to the half of the world in the Pacific theater.

There are already alarming signs appearing. Regarding Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets, Japan has given up any pretension of being apologetic and is more assertive than ever in pushing its claims. Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto went to the extent of saying that his country will consider an attack on the islets as one on its territory, following a row triggered by the adoption of an increased number of government-approved textbooks that depict Dokdo as Japan’s.

First, I admit that Korean knee-jerk reactions to the Japanese textbook issue are not mature to say the least but the Korean diplomatic immaturity, although I don’t condone it as a Korean, is chronic.

But Matsumoto’s remarks should be taken in the context of Japan’s imperial government’s orders to media outlets after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake that killed over 100,000. The Japanese media at that time fed on government releases and reported that Korean immigrants, many of whom moved to the areas around Tokyo, poisoned wells and committed arson. Japanese vigilantes went on a killing spree, piercing not just Koreans but also Chinese with bamboo spears.

The “day of infamy” declared by FDR for Japan’s attack on the Pearl Harbor at the start of the Pacific War during World War II also was the result of a political manipulation to divert the anger of the public frustrated by the embargo imposed by the United States for Japan’s invasion of China.

This type of behavior is not limited to the Japanese, although they excel in the intensity and scale. As I said at the start of this column, I am taking examples that are readily available to me for the greater purpose of pointing out human nature commonly found irrespective of race, culture, nationality.

The post-9/11 reactions in the United States belong to the same category, especially regarding the invasion of Iraq. Four passenger jets, hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists, slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people and 19 terrorists.

We remember a teary-eyed George W. Bush, the U.S. President, who appeared on television nine hours after the terror attacks, vowing to track down and bring all perpetrators to justice. Then, a front opened on Afghanistan in an effort to hunt Osama bin Laden and punish Islamic fundamentalists who protect him.

When bin Laden proved to be elusive, Bush opened another front in Iraq on what proved to be a false pretense that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was next in line to be a bin Laden of greater proportions. Bush’s expedition was a successful preemptive action, somewhat helping America restore its superpower pride and channeling national frustration. However, as we all know, the Iraq war has proved to be an open-ended nation-building endeavor, enervating the world’s strongest nation to the level the Cold War failed to.

Once again, I want to emphasize the post-traumatic reaction is not unique to one or two countries but constitutes the basis of human nature The United States has been cited for its superior status in global politics and Japan for the immediacy of a fallout from such an emotional outburst that will directly affect us, the Koreans.

So the point is that if there is nobody in Seoul thinking about containing the possibility that Japan acts out on the post-March 11 trauma, somebody in Washington or London should start now.