By Jason Lim
In his Friday article in the Wall Street Journal titled "Shinzo Abe Shooting Recalls Japan's Prewar History of Political Violence," Peter Landers writes, "The shooting recalls Japan's turbulent pre-World War II era, when assassinations occurred more frequently and were used as a political tool. One of Japan's most influential and longest-serving prime ministers, Hirobumi Ito, was killed in 1909 ― after he had left office ― at a train station in what is now northeast China. The assassin was a Korean nationalist who objected to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula, which the Tokyo government completed the following year."
On the surface, the facts are accurate. Both Abe and Ito were former prime ministers who were shot to death by a lone gunman who had issues with their actions. Ah, but what a difference context makes.
You don't need to say his name out loud to know that the Korean nationalist assassin was Ahn Jung-geun, one of the primary heroes of Korea's independence lore of the early 20th century. He is a household name in Korea and well-recognized even in China. In fact, many contemporary Chinese leaders wrote poems honoring his action. His legend has grown with time, and there are even multiple movies that have been made about him. He's one of the few cultural icons that seems to have reached a deified status with zero detractions or criticisms.
While Landers was making the point that the last time Japan suffered such a highly visible political assassination was when Ito was killed by Ahn, the juxtaposition between Abe's killing and Ito's assassination would inevitably rub Koreans the wrong way because the historical context is so different. Landers' article was immediately lambasted by various Korean social media sites, with even mainstream media weighing in.
The Herald Business, a local economic daily, wrote (my translation), "There is a need to distinguish how we understand Ahn's just actions compared to other examples that Landers put forth in that Ahn's just action in Harbin occurred in the context of an independence movement while others were violent happenings that rose out of internal domestic political issues."
But context is also dependent on the perspective of the beholder. Even today, Japan officially considers Ahn a terrorist for having killed a legendary Meiji-era leader. Yoshihide Suga, a former Japanese prime minister, stated that the Harbin Memorial building built by China commemorating Ahn's heroism was not "conducive to building peace and stability" among East Asian countries. Well, China and Korea would beg to disagree.
What about Tetsuya Yamagami, the alleged Abe assassin who was caught at the scene of the crime? So far, he seems to be an unemployed 41-year-old who was a loner with a brief stint in the Japanese navy. By all accounts, to the Japanese, Abe's killing might be the act of an imbalanced mental patient who irrationally blamed Abe for being connected to a religious group that fleeced his mother and had the wherewithal to construct a homemade gun that he used to shoot Abe. Just horrible luck.
Unless Yamagami somehow turns out to be a Zainichi Korean, that is. It doesn't have to be factual. We have all seen the sheer political power of false information to move the public narrative and actionalize irrationality. This is where another historical context comes shrieking in like a banshee.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1923 Kanto earthquake that leveled Tokyo, there was a widespread rumor that the ethnic Koreans living in Japan were looting and setting fires in the midst of the devastation. Mobs of unchecked Japanese vigilantes, aided and abetted by the local police, sought out and brutally killed any ethnic Korean that they could find over a period of several days.
Most recently, the Apple TV show "Pachinko" showed a glimpse of how this played out. Some put the number of victims as high as 20,000 ethnic Koreans who were killed. Basically, the ethnic Koreans, who were vulnerable and marginalized second-class citizens of the Japanese Empire, were easy scapegoats for the anger and confusion that naturally arise out of natural disasters.
Like many Imperial Japan-era atrocities, the massacre of ethnic Koreans after the 1923 earthquake remains visceral in the collective Korean psyche, all the more so since Japan has never formally admitted that it happened. So, when you start seeing social media posts in Japan about Abe's assassin potentially being a Zainichi Korean, the stakes just got a lot higher. It's hard not to sympathize with today's ethnic Koreans in Japan who are dealing with the dueling sense of sadness for the death of a political leader and fear of a violent blowback against their well-being.
All this goes to show that today's events cannot be divorced from the historical context through which we understand them. Facts are what they are, but context is what turns facts into truths. Unfortunately, context is a shifting narrative depending on where you sit and which tribal identity you partake in. Inevitably, history is political.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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On the surface, the facts are accurate. Both Abe and Ito were former prime ministers who were shot to death by a lone gunman who had issues with their actions. Ah, but what a difference context makes.
You don't need to say his name out loud to know that the Korean nationalist assassin was Ahn Jung-geun, one of the primary heroes of Korea's independence lore of the early 20th century. He is a household name in Korea and well-recognized even in China. In fact, many contemporary Chinese leaders wrote poems honoring his action. His legend has grown with time, and there are even multiple movies that have been made about him. He's one of the few cultural icons that seems to have reached a deified status with zero detractions or criticisms.
While Landers was making the point that the last time Japan suffered such a highly visible political assassination was when Ito was killed by Ahn, the juxtaposition between Abe's killing and Ito's assassination would inevitably rub Koreans the wrong way because the historical context is so different. Landers' article was immediately lambasted by various Korean social media sites, with even mainstream media weighing in.
The Herald Business, a local economic daily, wrote (my translation), "There is a need to distinguish how we understand Ahn's just actions compared to other examples that Landers put forth in that Ahn's just action in Harbin occurred in the context of an independence movement while others were violent happenings that rose out of internal domestic political issues."
But context is also dependent on the perspective of the beholder. Even today, Japan officially considers Ahn a terrorist for having killed a legendary Meiji-era leader. Yoshihide Suga, a former Japanese prime minister, stated that the Harbin Memorial building built by China commemorating Ahn's heroism was not "conducive to building peace and stability" among East Asian countries. Well, China and Korea would beg to disagree.
What about Tetsuya Yamagami, the alleged Abe assassin who was caught at the scene of the crime? So far, he seems to be an unemployed 41-year-old who was a loner with a brief stint in the Japanese navy. By all accounts, to the Japanese, Abe's killing might be the act of an imbalanced mental patient who irrationally blamed Abe for being connected to a religious group that fleeced his mother and had the wherewithal to construct a homemade gun that he used to shoot Abe. Just horrible luck.
Unless Yamagami somehow turns out to be a Zainichi Korean, that is. It doesn't have to be factual. We have all seen the sheer political power of false information to move the public narrative and actionalize irrationality. This is where another historical context comes shrieking in like a banshee.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1923 Kanto earthquake that leveled Tokyo, there was a widespread rumor that the ethnic Koreans living in Japan were looting and setting fires in the midst of the devastation. Mobs of unchecked Japanese vigilantes, aided and abetted by the local police, sought out and brutally killed any ethnic Korean that they could find over a period of several days.
Most recently, the Apple TV show "Pachinko" showed a glimpse of how this played out. Some put the number of victims as high as 20,000 ethnic Koreans who were killed. Basically, the ethnic Koreans, who were vulnerable and marginalized second-class citizens of the Japanese Empire, were easy scapegoats for the anger and confusion that naturally arise out of natural disasters.
Like many Imperial Japan-era atrocities, the massacre of ethnic Koreans after the 1923 earthquake remains visceral in the collective Korean psyche, all the more so since Japan has never formally admitted that it happened. So, when you start seeing social media posts in Japan about Abe's assassin potentially being a Zainichi Korean, the stakes just got a lot higher. It's hard not to sympathize with today's ethnic Koreans in Japan who are dealing with the dueling sense of sadness for the death of a political leader and fear of a violent blowback against their well-being.
All this goes to show that today's events cannot be divorced from the historical context through which we understand them. Facts are what they are, but context is what turns facts into truths. Unfortunately, context is a shifting narrative depending on where you sit and which tribal identity you partake in. Inevitably, history is political.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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