Why Korean unification is important for Japan

By Emanuel Pastreich

The threat of North Korean missiles has raised concerns among the Japanese public and policymakers in Tokyo worry that their country could suffer tremendous economic damage if trade is disrupted by a conflict with North Korea.

There are also Japanese strategic thinkers who oppose a unified Korea because they perceive it as a potential economic rival for Japan in terms of the scale of its economy.

But if we look at the growing threat of war around the world, it is obvious that the long-term solution for Japan's security concerns is not the purchase of more weapons, but rather the creation of a peace regime in Northeast Asia that is centered around a unified Korean Peninsula.

Although such a move does not match with the discussion on security at many think tanks, it would be the best investment of time and effort for Japan and such a discussion in Japan about a peace regime built around a unified Korean Peninsula is neither unrealistic nor naive.

There is no reason to believe that profound change is impossible on the Korean Peninsula, no basis for presuming that military tensions, and missile launches, must continue on far into the future in North Korea, getting only worse, and no foundations for assuming that the Kim family will be ensconced in North Korea for centuries.

I was delighted to learn in my meetings with Japanese politicians that there is a substantial faction who have come to see Korean unification as a geopolitical positive for Japan and who are open to launching broad discussions on the topic. The problem is rather that they feel constrained by the inflexibility encountered in policy circles in Washington D.C.

For many Japanese, accustomed to an inflexible and predictable socio-economic order, it is hard to imagine how Korea could be so completely transformed, and Japan with it. The biggest obstacle to such a new vision for Japan and Korea is overcoming assumptions about human society based on measurable items consumed and returning to traditional concepts of sustainability, harmony and frugality.

That is to say that ultimately, the future of Japan will not be determined by how many automobiles are produced, or how much Japan has in foreign reserves, but rather by inspiring ideas and dreams that transform us and our society.

Japanese civic life has been so flattened out from staring at smartphones, and youth are so demoralized by a test-taking educational system that has been stripped of all intellectual and ethical content that the Japanese have trouble imagining anything else than the harsh reality they see outside.

At the same time, the people of Japanese are crying out for a spiritual and cultural transformation of their country so that it can restore traditional values and leave behind this banal structure founded on consumption and exploitation.

Embracing the vision of a free and unified Korea will create an intellectual space for discussion wherein concepts for a new nation can be developed and the fundamentals of governance and society can be discussed in a serious manner.

That shift in itself will have an immediate impact on Japan itself even if the topic is Korea.

The discussion about the future of Korea will entail significant discussions with the citizens of China, Russia and the United States about what Korea can become, and what each of those nations ― all of which face the same contradictions ― can become. The resulting formulation of a new security structure for Northeast Asia can focus more on emerging threats like the degradation of the environment and the creation of a public space for accurate information on the internet, topics that will draw in a broad range of citizens.

There is no such discussion going on now ― although there should be. After all, Japan finds itself under tremendous pressure to transform its economy through an increase in military spending, and yet there is no space left to discuss the implications of this shift.

A dialog about a possible peace regime in Northeast Asia built around a unified Korea could offer a tangible alternative for the people of Japan.

Moreover, the geopolitical transformation of Northeast Asia resulting from the unification of the Korean Peninsula goes much further than investment in business opportunities.

There has not been a unified Korea that had close interaction with China and Japan since the 17th century, the Ming Dynasty. The current trade ties between Japan, South Korea and China are not paralleled by cultural and intellectual exchanges.

After the collapse of the civilizational order in Asia resulting from the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, interactions with China were controlled by the Manchurians. Many Koreans and Japanese never fully recognized the Manchurian Qing Empire as legitimate.

That gap in cultural relations between the nations remains to the present day.

A discussion that includes Japan about creating a new nation for Korea, including discussions about a constitution for a unified Korea that draws on the best of East and West, could serve as a tremendous stimulation and inspiration for the Japanese to reimagine what Japan can be as well.

After all, if Koreans start to draft a constitution and to imagine a Korean Peninsula that draws on the best of its civilization, from ancient times, that could be an incentive for the Japanese to undertake their own fundamental reevaluation of what Japan is, and where it is going.

The Japanese constitution, for example, is essentially a Japanese translation of an English constitution written up hurriedly during the occupation, and it is not founded on the best of Japan's intellectual traditions and does not include concepts about good governance taken from Japanese political philosophy. The concept of a peace constitution is a good one, especially today, but that peace constitution needs to be grounded in Japan's own tradition of peace ― going back to the Heian period.

A dialog in Japan on Korean unification can open up a serious discussion about Japan's position in the peace regime in East Asia and also of Japan's own approach to governance, reinvigorating political and cultural engagement and asking fundamental questions about what is a good society and how can it be established.

The debate on a free and unified Korea will inevitably lead to an inspired reevaluation of the best of Japan's own traditions.

Emanuel Pastreich is president of Asia Society, researcher at Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University and senior fellow at Global Peace Foundation. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.