David C. Kang: The year 2012 was fascinating for domestic politics and international relations in Northeast Asia. Perhaps most notably, every country in the region experienced a change of leadership. China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan all saw new leaders begin their tenure. In addition, regional relations took a turn for the worse, with numerous countries engaging in territorial and maritime disputes, disagreeing over interpretations of their shared histories.

One of the most interesting bilateral dynamics involves Japan and South Korea. In many ways, these two countries are natural allies: they are both advanced capitalist economies and some of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world. They are both stable and confident democracies, with vibrant domestic politics and a civil society. Both Japan and South Korea also see their respective military alliances with the United States as their most important relationship, and both see North Korea as a near-term threat. Culturally, both Korea and Japan share many similar historical influences and social norms, and Korean and Japanese are linguistically more similar than they are different.

Yet at the same time, both countries are different in some striking ways. One of the most interesting contrasts occurs in enduring patterns in electoral politics. Japanese politics is perhaps characterized best by stability, while South Korean politics is, to say the least, dynamic. Japan, a parliamentary electoral system, is perhaps most notable in the long-running influence of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). From 1955 to 2009, the LDP ruled Japan uninterrupted with the exception of an eighteen-month interregnum in 1993–94, when it briefly lost power to a coalition of leftist parties. By the mid-2000s, a gaggle of opposition parties located mostly on the left had managed to coalesce into the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). From 2009 to 2012 the DPJ held power, cycling through three prime ministers during that time before losing convincingly to a resurgent LDP in December 2012. In contrast, South Korea is a presidential system where political parties rename themselves in almost every election and are dominated far more by personalities than organization or ideology. An emerging South Korean trend has seen the creation of essentially a two-party system, with conservatives and progressives putting forth one candidate each for the presidential election held every five years. The Saenuri (“New Frontier”) Party was known as the Grand National Party until February 2012, while the major opposition Democratic United Party is the loosely progressive, or leftist, party. Tracing the transitions, name changes, and positions of South Korean parties is a major etymological task in itself.

Both countries have deep disagreements about their shared history that manifests itself in numerous ways. One of these issues is the question of “comfort women” who provided sexual service to the Japanese imperial army during the Pacific War. Whether they were coerced or volunteered, or the nature of sexual service during wartime, has become a matter of national pride and identity in both Korea and Japan: Koreans claim they were coerced sexual slaves and that the Japanese government should acknowledge and apologize for that fact, while the Japanese government and constitutional court have argued that they volunteered and thus Japan bears no responsibility. The Yasukuni shrine in Japan, which houses the remains of some “Class A” war criminals from the Pacific War, is also a focal point for controversy: Koreans believe that official Japanese leaders who visit the shrine are implicitly legitimizing Japan's colonial past, while the occasional Japanese political figure who visits invariably claims that such visits are private and simply to honor all those Japanese who died during Japan's wars. There is the question of whether Japanese middle-school textbooks present a less apologetic or more proud sense of Japanese history than some in Korea wish. After his election in December 2012, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo declared that he would consider “revisiting” the question of official Japanese apologies for its actions in the early twentieth century, most significantly raising the question of whether he would renounce or modify an official apology from Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi issued in 1995.

Perhaps most notable among the disputed relations between the two countries is the disputed ownership of a set of small, uninhabited islets that lie between them (“Dokdo” in Korean and “Takeshima” in Japanese). Both foreign ministries, for example, have posted extensive justifications about ownership of these islands on their official Web pages, and the Japanese prefecture of Shimane instituted “Takeshima Day” in 2005 to commemorate incorporation of the islands into Japanese rule, sparking protests from the Korean side. These tensions have generally remained rhetorical or for domestic political gain, although occasionally the disputes have had a consequential effect on bilateral relations. For example, in May 2012 Korea and Japan abandoned a proposed military intelligence sharing agreement, due mainly to Korean hesitance. In August 2012, then-president Lee Myung-bak became the first South Korean president to visit the islets, prompting a storm of protest from Japan, especially when the ROK prohibited a subsequent attempt by three Japanese LDP members to visit the islets.

In short, although economic relations continue to deepen between Korea and Japan, and despite numerous similarities, the two countries also have many differences and divisions. Their political and historical disputes show no impending sign of resolution.

The editors thought that asking two scholars to look beyond the headlines of the complex and interesting Korea-Japan relationship, and to bring a scholarly perspective to bear on these issues, would be of interest to the readers of JAS. To that end, we invited David Leheny and Victor D. Cha to engage in a dialogue with each other, prompted by questions from JAS associate editor David C. Kang. David Leheny is the Henry Wendt III ‘55 Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University and an expert on Japan. Leheny's scholarship has straddled domestic and international politics, focusing on Japan's interaction with global and international norms and ideas. Leheny's second book, Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), examines how two different norms involving security and policing became useful for political elites interested in expanding the coercive authority of the state, and engages Japanese debates about crime, sexual morality, and regional security. Victor D. Cha, D. S. Song Professor of Government at Georgetown University and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has written extensively on the Korea-Japan-U.S. relationship, most notably in his first book, Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). From 2004 to 2007, Cha served at the White House as director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council (NSC). At the NSC, he was responsible for Japan, the two Koreas, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island nations. He also served as the U.S. deputy head of delegation for the Six-Party Talks. He brings a wealth of scholarly and policy experience to the study of South Korea and Japan. Both bring years of experience to these issues, as well as different perspectives, and are delighted to have the opportunity to provide two different perspectives on the domestic politics, regional relations, and bilateral relations of South Korea and Japan.

David C. Kang: Some people surely see the recent elections as an example of a return to the past by both Japan and South Korea, with the LDP coming back into power in Tokyo and the child of a past leader assuming the top spot in Seoul. I'd argue, though, that this is a continuation of a long-term trend of South Korea moving forward into novel terrain—for example, in this case, electing the first woman to head a Northeast Asian country—while Japan stays stuck in a rut. Abe's recent comments about backtracking on apologies perhaps reinforce this contrast. What do you think of this, David?

David Leheny: I think it very possible that one can make this case for South Korea, but I'm reluctant to agree with the judgment on Japan. Let me be clear that “Japan stays stuck in a rut” is a sentiment that would be pretty recognizable in Japan, and I think that, depending on how one were to phrase the question, one might even get a majority of Japanese to agree that it's an apt characterization. But it's also the kind of description that takes for granted that Japan is a collective entity that has some kind of clear purpose or trajectory along which we can measure progress, retrenchment, success, and failure. It seems to me to be a strange way to describe a country.

After the drubbing the LDP took at the polls in 2009, it became conventional to describe it as a “spent force.” That was another characterization that I found puzzling, as it seemed to conceive of this political party as a bullet that had a specific and now fulfilled purpose rather than as an organization of self-interested politicians who were likely to try to get back into power. I think I see the “stuck in a rut” reference the same way, in that it depicts Japan not as a changing country facing a variety of problems, but rather on the stagnant end of some kind of static-dynamic continuum.

During Japan's “lost” decades since the bubble era, there have been a few years of GDP growth rates exceeding those of the United States and key EU members, and a number of key industries restructured effectively after the financial “big bang” of the 1990s.Footnote ¹ And for all the concern about political ineffectiveness and the merry-go-round of Japanese leadership, Koizumi Junichiro became the second-longest-serving prime minister in postwar Japanese history. My point isn't that we should adopt a glass-half-full perspective on Japan, given the grave labor-market, demographic, and fiscal challenges it faces in coming years. And of course this is in addition to the consequences of 3/11 (the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and subsequent nuclear tragedy), whether we want to view that primarily as a natural disaster or a self-inflicted one. One would be hard-pressed to come up with a catastrophe of similar magnitude and breadth in any advanced industrial nation.

It's rather to suggest that by talking about Japan's being stuck in a rut, we end up collapsing a lot of activity and change into a singular narrative of stagnation, and implying that there's something specifically Japanese about the country's difficulties in confronting its key problems. But if one considers how difficult it was for the Obama administration to pass even a limited universal health care bill, or the recent American struggles with the “fiscal cliff,” not to mention both Greece and Italy going into a kind of receivership, it's not at all clear to me that Japan is a terrible outlier. Its challenges seem depressingly familiar to late industrial economies, with Japan perhaps a bit ahead of the curve but facing demographic pressures more extreme than most other places, particularly the United States.

This isn't a matter of mere terminology, because the talk of Japan's being in a rut (and the various Japanese versions of that sentiment) has a political edge. Just as Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye can ask “Does Japan desire to continue to be a tier-one nation, or is she content to drift into tier-two status?”Footnote ² so too can Japanese leaders. Indeed, I don't see Abe's inclination (and clear desire) to backtrack on apologies as being part of a rut or being a step backward. After all, for all the obvious elisions in postwar Japanese discussions of the cruelty associated with its imperial path, public refusals to apologize in the face of clear foreign demands are fairly recent, both in terms of the high-level nature of the demands and the angry recalcitrance from key members of the Japanese government. One of the most powerful tools that nationalists like Prime Minister Abe and former Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro have in their repertoires is this sense of stagnation, that only some kind of reclaiming of national subjectivity—through rehabilitation of an unfairly pilloried past and a current willingness to defend more assertively Japan's regional and global positions—can break Japan out of the doldrums. That is, for many on the right in Japan, walking back those apologies would be a step forward, not backward. And it would be evidence that Japan is getting out of its rut.

I don't mean that David [Kang]'s question itself is partly to blame for Abe's having threatened to turn back the clock on the 1993 Kono apology, but I do think that it reflects a broader discussion, both at home and abroad, that is deeply political. Whether it comes from American critics of Japan who would like the country to play a more expansive role in self- and regional defense, or Japanese nationalist leaders who want citizens to be proud of what they view to have been in many ways a noble, anti-imperial cause in World War II, the “stuck in a rut” imagery is pregnant with possibility, and I think it's more profitable to examine those possibilities rather than to look for more evidence that Japan just can't shake its lying-on-the-sofa-watching-television depression.

David C. Kang: What's your take on these issues, Victor?

Victor D. Cha: I tend to agree with David [Leheny] on Japan (so much for “debate”). To say that Abe's reelection means Japan is moving backwards is the equivalent of saying Obama's reelection means we are mired in another four years of high unemployment. It's too big a leap. Sure, Abe is the same person he was when he prematurely left office last time—a political conservative, an LDP “blue blood,” etc. But the verdict will entirely depend on his record going forward. To the extent that he can accomplish anything before the Upper House elections this summer, Abe will be focused on growing the economy. Should he be successful, then we will be less willing to judge Japan's politics as “stuck in a rut.” Moreover, when he was last in office, Abe had agenda items that many in the United States would see as moving Japan out of the proverbial rut. A permanent law of peacekeeping operations, for example, would give Japan a capacity to be a real contributor to public goods in the international system when it comes to UN peacebuilding actions. I understand that some may see the passage of such a law as dangerous and reigniting “wartime Japan,” but I personally do not believe that an Abe government—even with folks like Aso Taro et al. in it—has some secret pre-1940s design. Abe's conception of nationalism is a civic nationalism that is distinct from prewar Japan. Perhaps the strongest argument for “stuck in a rut” would be the fact that the LDP did not have a dynamic new leader to put forward besides Abe. But this has more to do with maladies of the political system than it does with Abe's policies going forward.

On Korea, an American colleague from the investment world called during the Christmas holidays to ask about Korea. His question was a simple one: How did Korea transform from a corrupt and opaque system, unwelcome to international investors, into one that now sets the standard for a fairly open and transparent business environment? As with many Americans operating in China, he was frustrated with the vagaries of corruption and inconsistent application of rules, and wanted to know how or when China would follow the “Korean example.”

One hears this more and more these days: the “Korean example.” International aid experts want to know how other countries can follow Korea's path of turning from a net development assistance recipient into a net aid donor. African specialists marvel at the example set by Korea as a host of global events like the Olympics, World Cup, or World Expo, as their countries aspire to do the same. And Chinese remain baffled at how their own efforts to spread “soft power” fail while Korea's “Gangnam style” attracts the attention of over one billion people around the globe.

To me, the “Korean example” is derived from many factors, but there are two that stand out: democratization in 1987 and the financial crisis in 1997. The first of these hardly figures in the average Korean's daily thoughts. The other is, ironically, one that the average Korean would care to forget. The 1997 financial crisis rudely shocked Korean businesses and households into seeing the flaws of an economy that irresponsibly leveraged growth at all costs. Koreans chafed at difficult IMF reforms at the time, but they ultimately helped to insulate the Korean economy from the global financial meltdown involving the United States five years ago.

Democratization was critical to Korea's emergence, not simply because it allowed for direct presidential elections, but perhaps even more importantly because it placed a premium on openness, rules, and transparency in a juridical system as the legitimate goal of Korean society. Of course, there were other related factors, such as the 1988 Olympics, the bursting of the credit bubble, and the emergence of a consumer middle class, but without democratization and the financial crisis, I do not think the world would be talking about the “Korean example” today.

Koreans (like Americans) do not think about democracy on a daily basis. In fact, many Koreans today probably curse their own political system that just elected a former dictator's daughter as the next president of the country. But here once again, Korea may be setting a new example.

No other population in East Asia has elected a woman to the highest office in the land. While scandals are typically the norm in Asian politics, even in democracies like the Philippines, Korea was devoid of any earth-shattering controversies afflicting either candidate in the recent election (or claims of voting station irregularities like in the United States). Koreans may not feel this way about their candidates, but the world saw one candidate as a reluctant and quiet gentleman, who was loyal to a former president and who wanted to carry out his vision of a more equitable society. And it saw the other candidate as a woman, who had no material need to enter the dirty world of politics, but only chose to do so when the nation plunged into crisis in 1997. She then rose to the highest office in the land with the promise to unite a politically divided country. Koreans may scoff at these naïve characterizations, but perceptions often constitute the reality, and indeed, from the world's perspective, the Korean election saw two candidates who appeared to be genuinely interested in public service more than political power.

Moreover, unlike other previous presidents in Korea, Madame Park Guen-hye will take office next month having already occupied the Blue House once before. In politics, where the power-hungry lust for power and will abandon almost any value to achieve it, it is refreshing to have a president who will be less distracted by the aura of the office and more focused on the work at hand. Park will also be the first occupant of the Blue House who has already visited North Korea and met with its leadership before taking office. This might mean less of the single-minded pursuit of a visit to Pyongyang that seemed to afflict past presidencies. It is true that Park does not have the extensive business experience needed to bring the country out of its current economic malaise. But then again, the outgoing president's business experience did not appear to help much in that matter.

[Thus, while] some Koreans may be unhappy with their presidential choice, Korea is once again setting a new example for Asia and the world.

David C. Kang: Any rejoinder you'd like to offer, David?

David Leheny: Very briefly, more than just agreeing with many of Victor's comments about Korea, I've learned from them and appreciate his laying out the issues so clearly. I think that, unsurprisingly, I'm probably a bit more sympathetic with the left-leaning critics of the IMF bailout and of Madame Park than Victor is, but I also have to concede that, whatever pain the IMF measures caused to many of the most economically vulnerable members of South Korean society, they may have had the beneficial longer-term effects that he sees. And I would be very happy if Madame Park turns out to be the wise, capable, and just leader that South Korea deserves. But I'm a bit less encouraged than he about the potential meaning of her earlier time in the Blue House. Indeed, her young life seems to me to have been shaped at least as much by family tragedy as anything else, certainly not a young life we would wish visited upon anyone. But the quasi-messianic nature of some of her statements seems to me to suggest that while she may not be hungry for the fame and status of leadership, she may view current problems in South Korea as the result of a turn away from the regime with which she is most familiar. I don't mean that she's anti-democratic, but simply that growing up in a position of power seems to me just as likely to lead to absolute certainty of one's own views as it would to a noblesse oblige commitment to public service; indeed, I would think that for many people from powerful political families—whether they be named Park, Nehru, Bush, or Kishi—the two may be nearly indistinguishable. That said, this is really more of a concern than a disagreement, and I'm hoping that Madame Park will be the capable and wise president that South Korea deserves.

I'm a total skeptic of “soft power”—a term that Victor doesn't use—and that probably shapes the way I respond to his story about the example that South Korea provides. There's no doubt in my mind that South Korea's extraordinary economic growth and the manifold changes in Korean society could and should provide lessons elsewhere, but I'm less convinced that South Korea unproblematically means overseas what, I think, Victor suggests in his description. It's not that I have clear evidence to the contrary, but I recall that Japanese leaders themselves were deeply encouraged about Japan's status overseas in different ways from the 1980s through the early 2000s, from Japan's economic miracle, to the 1990s arguments about an “East Asian Model” (that was understood in Tokyo as being basically Japanese), to the “Gross National Cool” discussions in the 2000s. To be sure, none of Miyazaki Hayao's animated films has blown up internationally quite the same way that PSY's “Gangnam Style” did last year, but there was enough encouraging rhetoric about Japan's overseas appeal during much of this time that I think that many Japanese leaders—Abe Shinzo and Aso Taro among them—badly misjudged views overseas of Japan. Indeed, I think that for many conservatives, part of the appeal of a belief in Japanese “soft power” was the expectation that other countries would have more sympathy for the ideals of the Japanese Right: that Japan's wartime history is more noble than generally described, that Japan ought to have a military, and so forth. My point isn't that Korea doesn't serve as a model—though the emotional side of me wants that model to come from the brave commitment of labor unions, student groups, and other organizations to stand up to a military dictatorship rather than from the country's acceptance of IMF standards—but just that discussions of a country's appeal overseas often have a pretty airless quality to them. I wouldn't want leaders in Seoul to make the mistakes that their counterparts in Washington and Tokyo have made in assuming that their country's appeal overseas is what they imagine it to be at home. It seems to me that the Japan that anime fans liked, or that economic policymakers admired, was not really the Japan that was being discussed or seen in Tokyo. And I think the same is true of American soft power, that we're often the worst judges of how others see us, because we're too deeply committed to certain claims about our country's values, experience, and history to be able to see ourselves from the other end of the telescope, to use a Benedict Anderson phrase. Again, this isn't a disagreement with Victor per se, but just an expression of concern about leaders in Seoul possibly misinterpreting how their country is viewed by PSY fans or economic policymakers overseas.

Finally, on Abe Shinzo: I agree with much of Victor's characterization of him, but I would like to clarify that while I don't think that it's proper to think of the LDP's return as a step backward or stagnation, I don't see this as a promising sign either. Indeed, I agree with Victor's characterization of Abe's “civic nationalism”—a view he shares with Kevin Doak, who discusses Abe in his excellent book on Japanese nationalismFootnote ³—but I would suggest that this ought to make us suspicious of civic nationalism, not convince us that Abe isn't dangerous. Abe clearly moves away from any clear ethnonationalism in his book Utsukushii kuni e (Toward a beautiful nation, Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006), but the discussion of multiethnic nationalism in the book is curious. While he extols the contributions of nonnative players on Japan's national soccer team, he also includes a strange passage about the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby. Abe is a movie buff, and he focuses especially on the scenes in which Eastwood's character, a crusty old boxing coach (is there any other kind of boxing coach? or Clint Eastwood character?), is seen studying Gaelic, which Abe interprets as suggesting that he's trying to get in touch with his Irish heritage. He favorably refers to the critic Matsumoto Ken'ichi, drawing and reporting unproblematically the idea that while many national groups—he specifies Chinese, Koreans, and “Hispanics” (hisupanikku)—went to America because it was already an ideal country, only the Irish tried to build an ideal country in America (“risō no kuni’ ni tsukuriageyō to shita,” p. 90). And he uses this as a kind of object lesson in how to think about the possibility of good citizens.

Speaking as an Irish American, I guess I appreciate the shout-out, though I'm also relatively convinced that my ancestors were driven to the United States not so much by a transcendent civic goal as by economic exigency—more or less the same reason most people arrived on American shores. My point here is simply that the America that Abe mentions seems different than the one I grew up in, and that his vision of multiethnic nationalism has a kind of hierarchical and rigid quality to it that I think would be difficult to sell in an American election, even if it's something that nativist Irish Americans (say, Pat Buchanan) might want to believe. Putting that together with Abe's understandable if troubling efforts in the same book to rehabilitate his grandfather, former prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, as well as his commitment to changing the debates about the comfort women and Japan's wartime behavior, not to mention his wish to station officials on the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, I think we have evidence that his form of nationalism isn't necessary safe, and it certainly doesn't strike me as being more obviously liberal than the ethnic nationalism with which civic nationalism is often contrasted.

I stand by my point that this isn't a sign that Japan is stuck in a rut, and indeed, I think that the imagery of stagnation is one of the most powerful weapons a nationalist like Abe has. And I agree with Victor, that Abe's first order of business—and the one on which he will most likely be judged—will be righting Japan's economic ship. But it seems to me that his version of nationalism, one that emphasizes commitment by people to service to the nation rather than by a government committed both to local and international accountability for its citizens, lends itself to some pretty inflexible stances that pay homage to the eternal goodness of the Japanese nation rather than to the kinds of compromises and discussions that would likely work best for Japan's medium-term future.

To give a quick example, if one judges—and I'm not saying this is my opinion, but I think it's a popular one in Washington and Tokyo—Japan's key international challenge to be the rise of China, it would seem to me to be absolutely essential for the Japanese government to dampen tensions with South Korea both over the comfort women issue and over the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima Islands. Abe has shown a pragmatic quality at times, but I'm not sure how his own version of civic nationalism leads to a favorable outcome in these cases; indeed, I think it makes these discussions a good deal harder. And those strike me as being far less thorny than dealing with China, in which Abe's commitments on the Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes seem at least to raise rather than reduce the possibility of miscalculations on both sides.

I very much appreciate Victor's reminder that Abe's nationalism takes a distinctive form, and it would be unfair to lump him in with the most obvious ethnic and racial chauvinists in right-wing Japanese circles. But I don't think that there is a simple dichotomy between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, and I am not sure I trust civic nationalists to show good judgment. Abe's return to power doesn't terrify me, but it doesn't comfort me much either.

David C. Kang: Any final thoughts before we move on to other issues, Victor?

Victor D. Cha: Very quickly. By the “Korean example,” David [Leheny] is right that I do not mean soft power, nor do I mean propagation of an ideal to achieve some global affinity with Korean values. It is merely the point that others may learn from the Korean example, as hardworking Koreans slog on for themselves. Korea has already done this in several ways, being asked to give presentations to newly democratized states in the Community of Democracies about Korea's peaceful transition in 1987. Or, in development assistance, where Korea is increasing official development assistance budgets while almost every other country in the world is decreasing theirs. And you cannot tell me that young women all over Asia do not look with some degree of interest and curiosity at the election of Park. Believe me, Korea is far from perfect. There are still many problems, including the corruption that David [Kang] refers to. Income gaps are widening. The real unemployment and underemployment rate among college-educated adults is hovering in the 20 percent range. But I would give credit where credit is due. However, rather than soft power, I would see this more as a middle-power country, whose achievements and policies enable it to punch above its weight in global affairs.

David C. Kang: I'd like to push you both a bit on how we should think about Japan. What do you each make of the idea that, perhaps due in part to it standing off from the continent as a set of islands, it is unusually inward-looking? Is it worth thinking about what some have referred to as a “Galapagos effect”?

Victor D. Cha: On the Galapagos effect, I leave it to David [Leheny] to explain whether and why this might exist. In our own little universe at Georgetown, I know we have experienced this. Applications from Japan are down (and we have the best master's degree program in international affairs, according to Foreign Policy). In our own graduate program on Asia, we did not yield a single application from Japan last year, which was surprising. Moreover, among America-based student pools, the number of students interested in studying Japan also seems to be dropping. Again, our graduate program on Asia has well over 100 applications for a handful of slots, and maybe one or two of the 100-plus were training as Japan specialists. This is despite the fact that Georgetown has strong Japan scholars.

David Leheny: Georgetown has an unfair number of America's best scholars of Japan (and Asia more broadly, of course), in addition to its stellar international affairs program and wonderful location. Unsurprisingly, its problems in attracting Japanese applicants are mirrored at every other school with which I am familiar, certainly including Princeton. I find it quite distressing. My sense is that the connection to a “Galapagos effect” is roundabout and tangential rather than direct. I certainly don't think it's because of a conscious mass decision to turn inward, but I do think that in uncertain economic times, students are gravitating toward Japanese universities, which provide relatively predictable career opportunities, and that Japanese producers in certain markets—like cell phones and applications—are focusing on the surer bet of the local market rather than rolling the dice for big scores overseas. With regard to students, the Japanese government has taken note, and a number of officials and university administrators are taking steps to promote student exchanges and to align academic calendars to allow overseas study to take place more easily. Whether any of this will work, or whether it will have a measurable effect on Japan's growth rates, remains to be seen.

That said, just as the image of Japan's long-term postwar economic growth was a ubiquitously available trope for writers, political figures, officials, etc., so too is the idea that Japan is a struggling country with a sluggish economy, minimal job options available for young people, and so forth. Obviously, labor market problems are a serious concern for Japan, and it's right and proper that people prioritize them. The Kibōgaku (Social Sciences of Hope) project at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Social Science, for example, has resulted in the publication of a number of books and articles that are all in one way or another aimed at the idea of building national hope to help the country out of its malaise, even as the authors themselves have had to deal with the messy complexities of local and national economies in the process.

What's interesting to me is the way in which this exact same imagery can be deployed for myriad other purposes. One of the worst-timed books of recent years was Isshiki Masaharu's Nani ka no tame ni: Sengoku38 no kokuhaku (For something: The confessions of Sengoku38, Tokyo: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2011). Isshiki is the former Japanese Coast Guard member who uploaded onto YouTube (under the user name “Sengoku38”) the long video of a confrontation with a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat and a Chinese fishing boat in August 2010, in the disputed waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. He was outraged that the Chinese skipper, who had been held on criminal charges for ramming the Japanese boat, was released to Chinese authorities without prosecution and without much explanation from the Japanese government, which seemingly capitulated to Chinese pressure. Leaking the video—for which he was then forced out of the Coast Guard—was his way of ensuring that the Japanese public was aware of what he felt was clear criminal wrongdoing by the Chinese captain and a cover-up by government officials desperate to avoid a more serious dust-up with Beijing. Isshiki was immediately touted in Japanese right-wing and Internet libertarian circles as a hero, but his book was released just about a week before the March 11 earthquake, obviously limiting the kind of media attention it might otherwise have gotten.

Isshiki's argument is in many ways conventional, even if the book takes some bizarre turns, like quoting John F. Kennedy (“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”) and Hamlet (“To be or not to be.”), which seem to turn the act of sitting in an Internet cafe hundreds of miles from the confrontation and uploading a video into an almost Wagnerian drama. He is, for what it is worth, what we might call a civic nationalist; his wife is Korean, and he writes lovingly of her support as being essential to his own patriotic decision to support his country. On China, he doesn't mince words: the fishing boat incursion is part of a larger pattern of invasion (shinryaku, the very word that most Japanese rightists have strenuously insisted should be dropped from history textbook descriptions of Japanese behavior in World War II). But toward the book's conclusion, he launches into a protracted discussion of Japan's economic malaise, limited economic opportunities facing young people, and so forth, and argues that this is exactly why people should make patriotic decisions to defend the country, presumably in the Coast Guard, Self-Defense Force, or the like. It's this being stuck in a rut that real patriotism can unstick. And it's partly this emphasis on the country's problems and on renewed patriotism (often understood as physical defense of the country) as a panacea that disconcertingly finds its way into speeches and essays by Abe, Aso Taro, Ishihara Shintaro, Ishiba Shigeru, and so forth.

So in stating my concerns about the “stuck in the rut” imagery, I'm not in any way trying to deny the serious problems Japan currently has, nor the sorry record of recent Japanese governments. But I am saying that Japan is more than this—it's a country with a number of industries that had started to revitalize before the disruptions of March 11, with a vibrant popular culture, a high if stagnant standard of living, universal literacy, and so forth—and all of this risks getting lost in statements about the lost two decades. I'm not trying to correct a misperception, but I am trying to say that a partial image of poisonous, unmitigated stagnation can be politically useful, and it has clearly figured into the language of the Japanese Right that sees increased patriotism, as measured by a commitment to the country's physical defense, as the cure.

David C. Kang: Given that both of you are arguing that the elections reflect a dynamic society, could you both speak more to the electoral dynamics of the LDP and Saenuri? That is, has LDP support shifted, or is it largely the same as before—agrarian, gerrymandering, etc.? For Saenuri, could Victor explore a bit the support for Park? Regional support appears to remain important in Korea, and it also appears that older voters went to the polls. What are the medium-term consequences of disaffected younger voters and an aging population?

David Leheny: I'm uneasy about drawing clear conclusions from this election because I don't know that it can easily be separated from the March 11 disaster. I doubt it was the foremost thing on the minds of most voters, though certainly Abe and the LDP made a great deal out of a wide perception that the government's handling of the disaster and reconstruction had been inept. More important, the ascension of Prime Minister Noda—a conservative DPJ member—after Prime Minister Kan's resignation meant that the party was unlikely to prioritize antinuclear politics, and distancing itself from the post-Fukushima antinuclear movement that, of limited size anyway, had no major party to which it could turn its support. Whether the LDP's criticism of the DPJ was fair or not—many critics, including no shortage of foreign voices, point out that the unholy alliances between the nuclear power providers and energy regulatory bodies were forged under LDP rule, not the DPJ—it successfully promoted the image of a DPJ that could not be entrusted with governance, and there were few progressive voices willing to defend the party after Noda moved away from Kan's post-Fukushima decision to shut down all reactors pending extensive safety tests.

At the level of voters, the election seems to bear out what many experts on Japanese electoral politics (and I am not one of them) have been saying for the past few years.Footnote ⁴ There has been a decline in the percentage of the “organized” vote—people whose electoral choices are likely to be structured around the associations, unions, or co-ops in which they are members—that had been the backbone of much of the LDP for years. Indeed, the larger number of “floating voters” has been widely used to explain the DPJ's victory in 2009. But with a lower turnout than in the previous election, probably driven in part by widespread frustration with the DPJ among its previous supporters, the LDP could get back in largely by maintaining its considerable advantages among key constituencies (rural, elderly, etc.), watching support evaporate for the DPJ, while other protest votes were divided among a number of smaller parties. All told, the LDP received only about 35 percent of the vote: clearly the top party of the bunch, but not nearly a majority, and yielding parliamentary dominance wildly incommensurate with its national popularity, driven largely by its advantages in overrepresented rural regions and by the inability of smaller parties to mount serious challenges in the country's single-member districts.

As others have noted, the more visible and perhaps worrisome outcome is the appearance on the scene of the Japan Restoration Party, headed (almost certainly unstably) by two charismatic figures, Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru and former Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro. While largely in agreement on national security issues—where they will likely cooperate extensively with the LDP—they are internally divided on the political bellwether issue of nuclear power, opposition to which was one of the items on Hashimoto's populist agenda. Indeed, the rise of charismatic, populist politics has been a source of considerable concern and even hand-wringing in Japan, particularly since Koizumi's tenure in office, and I think what worries a number of Japanese progressives is not simply Abe's own right-wing positions, but also the presence of a large and voluble party, headed by nationally famous figures, potentially moving further to his right.

So I think the election can be read myriad ways, including as a referendum on the DPJ's failures in governance, as a sign that Japan is moving toward the right, that nothing ever changes, or the like. Whether the DPJ itself can rebound from this electoral disaster will, I think, tell us a bit more about possible outcomes in the future. Like many Japanese and foreign observers alike, I've found it to be a profoundly depressing experience to follow Japanese politics over the past couple of years, but I also want to be careful about bold conclusions about this election, given the peculiar combination of factors that led into it.

Victor D. Cha: Regarding Korea, Park's victory was a surprise to most. Polling prior to the election did not indicate an advantage for her. Once the third independent and progressive candidate (Ahn Chul-soo) dropped out of the race and left the ruling and opposition party candidates in a head-to-head race, many presumed that Moon Jae-in would enjoy enough of a boost from Ahn's supporters to push him across the finish line. Everyone suspected that it would be close, but once polling stopped (by law) in the days before the election, commentators edged in the opponent's direction. Folks in Park's inner circle whom I have spoken with tell me that they never believed the polls and had internal studies that said she would edge out a victory. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty. The end result, a popular vote of 51.6 percent (ROK has direct presidential elections, no electoral college) was the largest of any presidential candidate in the democratization era.

Political scientists are going to study these results for a while. In the interim, I think the election result is being interpreted as a victory for the so-called silent majority in Korea. Korean society still anchors itself in a slightly right-of-center base, constituted of those over fifty years old. These groups are not nearly as vocal as the younger progressives. They are not seen protesting on television. Nor do they use social media to make noise, organize, or mobilize. But Park's victory is seen by some as having been fostered by this group and particularly the “we built Korea” constituency. The demographic of this group is largely older (fifty-plus years old) and middle class, but not solely this group. Park won in every city and province except for three (Seoul and the Honam provinces: Chollanamdo and Chollabukdo), which is an impressive accomplishment. More interesting, the “we built Korea” group (called the WBK for short) self-identified in a way that we have not seen before. This group sees itself as having lived through dictatorships in the 1980s, democratization in 1987, the Olympics in 1988, and the revival from the financial crisis a decade later. In many ways they see themselves as the generation that built Korea into the successful world power it is today, and while I don't have the empirics to back it up, I would posit that they identified this election as a crucial one in determining Korea's future. For the WBK group, there was real concern about falling back into the decade of the progressive politics of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. I don't think Park energized this group to take to the polls. Indeed, one of her priorities in the latter stages of the election was to appeal to the younger generation (apparently, getting her to don blue jeans and do Gangnam style at her rallies was a really difficult lift for her advisors), not the older one. But the WBK group took the initiative on their own.

Does regionalism still exist in Korean politics? Of course. The Honam provinces (Chollanamdo and Chollabukdo) went overwhelmingly to Moon (10 percent versus 89.3 percent and 13.2 percent versus 86.3 percent, respectively) and the Yongnam provinces (Gyungsangbukdo and Gyungsangnamdo) went overwhelmingly for Park (80.8 percent versus 18.6 percent and 63.1 percent versus 36.3 percent, respectively). But what perhaps was most interesting is that the political center in Korea got wider as a result of this election. Both candidates fought for the center, which meant: (1) less polarized rhetoric on North Korea; (2) much deeper discussion of the need for South Korea to find a happy midpoint in its traditional growth-at-any-cost mentality; (3) promises by both candidates to close the income and wealth gaps in the country; and (4) promises to regulate the behavior of the chaebols, the mega-conglomerates that are perceived to operate with privileges in Korean society.

David C. Kang: Let's move on to Japan-Korea relations. We all know the standard explanation for the disputes over Dokdo/Takeshima, “comfort women,” the Yasukuni shrine, and middle-school textbooks that emphasize historical memory and apology. Despite some attempts to provide scholarly explanations, it strikes me that just pointing to domestic political causes for these actions begs the question of why such issues resonate deeply with publics in both Korea and Japan. And let me emphasize that this is a bilateral dispute—both Korea and Japan have taken steps that provoke or annoy the other side, and both emphasize their own innocence in the dispute. So I have two questions for you. Korea and Japan are often characterized as two democratic and capitalist countries that share similar values and that have their key military alliances with the United States, and thus cooperation between the two should be much closer than it is. But this also leads to an important question: is this simply superficial and rhetorical, or does the difficulty that Korea and Japan have in crafting a stable relationship hint at deeper differences between the two countries that should be considered alongside the similarities? And a follow-up question: can Park and Abe craft better relations than their predecessors? If the conventional wisdom, as David points out, is that the rise of China is the key foreign policy issue confronting both countries, then why haven't they put aside their differences?

David Leheny: I would defer to Victor on Korean perspectives on the history and territory disputes. On the Japanese side, one thing I find striking is how much unanimity there is over the territorial issues. I don't mean that there's no debate, but divisions on these topics are much less obvious than the wrenching discussions of history, which have been in many ways as contentious within Japan itself as they are between Japan and its neighbors, including South Korea.

I think there are probably limits to what we might expect from shared democratic or capitalist values. At least in Japan, regardless of how committed people may be to Japanese democracy, there is little support for a democratic-values-based foreign policy; indeed, when both Abe and Aso offered partly overlapping visions of “values-based diplomacy” in the mid-2000s, there was little popular support behind them and even less cohesive analysis of what such a foreign policy might mean. For the most part, the only people who wrote or spoke frequently about democracy and foreign policy were conservatives who had aimed to carve out some idea of an Asian community (e.g., Aso's “arc of freedom and prosperity”) that would somehow not involve China. My sense is that this was an ideological angle for many conservatives who had earlier believed in Asian values or an Asian cultural community that Japan would lead, only to realize that the rising China certainly has “Asian” credentials at least equal to Japan's. But these tropes, discussed in Abe's book Utsukushii kuni e and Aso's Totetsumonai Nihon [Japan, the tremendous] (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2007), were only lightly covered in the press, and indeed the Diet members, mostly Abe loyalists, who were part of a “values-based diplomacy” study group were key members of a group taking out an ad in the Washington Post rejecting a U.S. House of Representatives resolution that Japan should apologize more forthrightly for the “comfort women.” They hardly are the first group to whom I would turn for solutions to history debates.

On the history and territory disputes, I think that Abe and Park could make headway, and certainly both have some incentive to leverage friendship with one another against a China whose growth presents challenges (though opportunities too, of course) to both nations. But I find it very unlikely that they will do so in any meaningful or sustainable sense. The key problem is that no one can afford to be a first mover. Abe, I think, would be loath to be seen making any overtures to South Korea on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and he has already been truculent on the comfort women issue. Park would likewise risk losing some of her initial popularity if she were seen handing over Korean territory to Tokyo, even if the two countries were merely discussing the kind of resource-sharing arrangement that, I think, most sane people think will have to be part of the solution for both sets of Japan's territorial disputes.

And this is why I worry about the prospects. I think that the diplomats in all countries recognize that uninhabited islands are not worth risking combat over, but face querulous publics that would penalize any elected leader quite quickly if they were seen to initiate some kind of conciliatory move. President Park isn't going to take the step of negotiating the sovereignty of islands over which the ROK has de facto control, and any effort to take a conciliatory step on the part of Prime Minister Abe would provoke harsh responses from within his own LDP as well as the Japan Restoration Party. It would also be taken within Japan as a panic-inducing bellwether over the possibility of making concessions to China on the Senkaku/Diaoyu issues. I wish I saw a glimmer of hope in the impasse, but instead what we see on each side (as between Japan and China in their territorial dispute) is the effort by government officials and private citizens alike to find the smoking gun—that seventeenth-century map, that 1974 diplomatic statement, that sidebar agreement in 1988, that whatever—that proves incontrovertibly that the rocks are theirs. And these struggles have become more rather than less intense. Again, no one who is sane wants to fight over the islands, but many military conflicts have started over miscalculation and brinkmanship rather than clear design.

Like Alexis Dudden, who has written an excellent book on the apology debate between Japan and South Korea and has been doing further research on the territorial disputes, I would like to see a more active American role in this.Footnote ⁵ I know that Victor will disagree with me, and I recognize the risks to the United States in willfully inserting itself into a debate in which the claims on both sides are so heated. I also accept that my own views on this are likely shaped by my sense that the United States has some moral responsibility to try to resolve this. Having drafted the postwar peace agreement, the United States is hardly an innocent bystander, watching as two unruly children fight over a set of blocks. I realize that a public American acknowledgment of responsibility is out of the question. But Washington's exasperation with the gamesmanship between the two governments rests to some degree on an unwillingness to recognize just how intractable history issues are in democracies; I mean, even President Obama, decried by his campaign opponent as a chronic apologizer, had nothing to offer about the past in his trip to Cambodia last year. If any U.S. president were to apologize for bombing Cambodia or Laos, not to mention anything the United States did to Vietnam, he or she would have no prospect for reelection and would likely badly damage his or her own party's prospects. If those wars—with no lingering territorial issues for the United States, without long-term colonial domination by the United States, and with the United States not viewing any of the three countries as a current rival—could produce an unyielding position on history that is internationally acceptable only because the power imbalances are so severe, why would we expect that cooler heads simply should prevail between our democratic and much more evenly matched allies in the region? Just because they should, or because we don't see the value in the islands? American officials often describe the United States as having an indispensable role in the Pacific. In this sense, the much ballyhooed American “pivot” toward Asia isn't some kind of new event, but rather an acknowledgment of the obvious: we have been here all along. I realize that a more assertive American role in the territory and history disputes is exceptionally unlikely and certainly risky, but I am not sure that its current stance—shouting at the players to work it out for themselves—is much of a winning strategy either. It certainly isn't leadership. And given my experience in terms of American debates about its own history in the Pacific, not to mention the pattern of tensions between Japan and South Korea, I see little reason to be optimistic.

Victor D. Cha: On the empirical puzzle of why Japan and Korea do not coalesce more in the face of a rising China, and despite similar political values, I agree with David [Kang]'s point that blaming this on domestic politics only begs the question of the conditions under which these things resonate. But we have to define our dependent variable here: history always exists, but it resonates at some times in domestic politics, and at other times it does not. For as many occasions that an off-color comment by a Japanese politician has provoked outcries in Korea, there have been occasions when the same comment has not prompted a rupture in relations. So why at some times and not others? I do not think there is a lot of good work on this topic. There is quite a bit on why historical antagonism continues to exist (as a constant), and how it should all be traced to the U.S. postwar settlement (to be discussed below), but there is very little serious work on the historical-emotional rupture in relations as a dependent variable—why and when it matters to policy outcomes. At the risk of sounding like such a structuralist, there is research arguing that the perceived political and security commitment of the common ally, the United States, provides the enabling condition for whether history matters. Japan and Korea are much more likely to manage their bilateral relations successfully above the baseline of historical-emotionalism when they both harbor fears of abandonment regarding the U.S. security commitment. That is, when Seoul and Tokyo have real concerns about Washington's staying power in the neighborhood, politicians suppress their historical disputes and opt for pragmatic cooperation. But when the U.S. security blanket seems secure, there is a greater tendency to free-ride and for politicians to allow historical grievances to stand in the way of political relations. I have written about correlations between the two variables of the U.S. security commitment and historical disputes in Japan-Korea relations for over three decades since normalization in 1965. And in this regard, arguably the Obama administration's pivot to Asia has created structural conditions that allow for worsening Japan-Korea relations. This counterintuitive outcome obtains because Washington's pivot removes any overarching concerns about U.S. abandonment and allows politicians the leeway to play historical cards. I should note that I am a big supporter of the pivot, but this may be one of the unanticipated outcomes of it.

Stepping away from the political science-type explanations (which I am sure drives many readers crazy), I think the prospects for Abe-Park relations to move forward are reasonably good. This judgment probably runs contrary to most others, but at least in the initial weeks, I think Abe has done, and not done, a number of things that quietly signal pragmatism rather than dogmatism on history issues. I have known the prime minister personally for several years, and while his work, as David [Leheny] notes, sometimes suggests worrying views, he is in the end a pragmatic politician. Moreover, he is a reborn politician who wants to stay in office for more than six months given his past crash-and-burn stint in the job.

So, what has Abe done? He made Japan the first country to send a special envoy to congratulate and meet with president-elect Park. Nukaga carried a positive and forward-looking message for relations. We also need to look for the dogs that did not bark in Japan-ROK relations—that is, things that did not happen that could have inflamed relations. In this regard, a notable nonevent is that Abe has not elevated Takeshima Day in Japan from a regional holiday to a national one despite entreaties to do so. Abe also has not called for taking the island issue to the International Court of Justice, unlike previous prime ministers. Moreover, Abe has not disavowed the Kono statement on comfort women. Indeed, his chief cabinet secretary has gone on the record stating that Abe shares the same acknowledgment of the Kono statement. Of course, we are at the beginning of the Abe government, and as the seventieth anniversary of this issue approaches, Abe will indeed have to make a statement (if he is around that long).

There is no denying that we still have a long way to go. And indeed, the structural conditions cited above lean in the direction of things getting worse between Tokyo and Seoul before they get better. But Abe should be given some credit for trying.

Finally, I would differ with David [Leheny]'s characterization of the U.S. position on historical disputes as merely “shouting at the players to work it out for themselves.” Which U.S. official has said this? Contrary to this, I think U.S. officials have a deep appreciation and understanding of the intractability of these issues. There is a tendency for us academics to see policymakers as uninformed, bull-headed folk who use the blunt instrument of U.S. power to hammer every nail head they can find. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.S. policymakers understand the domestic-political incentives to manipulate history among Asian politicians; they understand the extent to which anti-Japanism has been ingrained in the mythmaking and postwar, postcolonial state-building projects in Asia; and they understand the inability to resolve these disputes simply through apologies. They do not “shout” at Japanese and Korean counterparts to solve their problems. On the contrary, the United States tries to counsel quietly, behind the scenes, and in ways that are not embarrassing to either side, and to save face. U.S. officials are careful not to take sides, and diligently try to offer subtle paths forward when none may appear to exist. Most important, U.S. officials try to keep our allies focused on the pragmatic need for cooperation in spite of the historical problems precisely because they understand how intractable these issues are. This is not dimwittedness. It is careful and well-informed management. Doing this sort of work publicly as opposed to privately has no marginal positive payoff for the United States or its allies. I don't mean to be so animated about this, but there is a tendency in academia to believe that we are smarter than everyone else (especially policymakers) and to presume that the government does not know what it is doing. I think this is incorrect. I also do not believe that an American mea culpa for all of these historical issues is the answer. It is unlikely that a U.S. presidential “apology” and acceptance of moral culpability for a postwar settlement made nearly seven decades ago in Asia will cause these historical issues to lose their importance to either Korea or Japan.

David C. Kang: Thank you very much, David Leheny and Victor D. Cha, for taking part in this fascinating discussion. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the region in the near future, as events unfold and as both new administrations interact and begin to reveal their actual approaches to issues and events.