“See with great clarity how much you presently treasure your suffering - how falsely valuable it has become to you…Man, in his present state, delights in sickness. Why? How can Mr. A see himself as a good man unless he can compare himself with the bad Mr. B?” - Vernon Howard

The jig is up. The Seoul correspondent of the Nishi Nihon Shimbun filed a report for their print edition this week and exposed the reason some South Koreans are desperate to cast Japan as the Evil Empire, despite efforts on both sides of the Sea of Japan to push the bilateral relationship in a positive direction. And there is no question the relationship is getting better every day. Here is our post about the events scheduled for Japan-South Korean Friendship Year 2005, one of the best ideas ever implemented for Japanese-Korean relations. Here, however, is a Korea Times article about some political opportunists who want to scuttle it.

Yet, despite the hysteria of amputated fingers and flaming arrows aimed at the police, we can wipe away the media froth and see that cooler heads are prevailing. Here is our previous post on the ongoing private-sector cooperation between the two countries. Following is a brief summary of some of the good news in Japanese-Korean relations that emerged since the Takeshima/Dokto and textbook controversies erupted.

Item: A South Korean company announced plans to begin regularly-scheduled sea cruises this July calling on Fukuoka City and Nagasaki in Kyushu, Cheju Island in South Korea, and other Korean and Chinese destinations. The week-long cruises will be based in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

Item: The Beetle, a high-speed jetfoil service between Fukuoka, Japan, and Busan, South Korea, carried a record 350,000 passengers in 2004, a 13.9% year-on-year increase. Driving passenger totals upward was the Korea boom in Japan and the start of the high-speed KTX rail service in South Korea. Sharp rises were seen for Japanese women over the age of 60 and Korean women in their 20s.

Item: Interaction between the people of Fukutsu, Fukuoka Prefecture, and Kyongju, South Korea, is flourishing. The Fukutsu-Kyongju Culture and Friendship Exchange Association, a group of about 60 people, has been studying the Korean language and culture and conducting grassroots exchanges since 1998. The people in Fukutsu were due for a homestay and visit to Kyongju this year, but were concerned that recent tensions might scuttle the trip. They were relieved to learn that their counterparts in South Korea look forward to their visit, and their plans will go ahead as scheduled.

Item: The Lotte Giants baseball team from the Korean League held its spring training camp in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. The Giants and three other Korean professional teams played 10 games in the area in early March.

Item: The Kyushu Japan-South Korean Economic Exchange Council for promoting trade and investment by private sector companies in Kyushu and South Korea opened its doors in Fukuoka City. The council’s objective is to create a business network to strengthen ties between Japanese and Korean companies. The South Korean Consulate in Fukuoka City, the local South Korean Trade Center, and a Tokyo consulting company are working together on the project.

Item: Researchers from the Fisheries and Fishing Community Research Center of the Korea Maritime Institute visited Kashima, Saga Prefecture, to observe the Ariake Sea tidelands, known for their six-meter tide level differential, and talk about the Gatalympics. The Center is interested in the Gatalympics because they are studying ways to promote local economies using tourism in fishing villages. (Here is our previous post about the tidelands and the Gatalympics.)

Item: Warabi-za, a drama troupe based in Akita Prefecture, plans their debut performance of the musical Hyakuba in Arita-machi, Saga Prefecture next month. The selection of Arita, the production center of Arita and Imari ware, is apt because the musical tells the story of the wife of a Korean potter in Arita who became the progenitor of the modern Japanese ceramics industry. The protagonist was modeled on the wife of Lee Sampyung, brought from Korea to Arita about 400 years ago by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The plot focuses on the cultural conflicts she faces in Japan, such as whether to hold a Korean or a Japanese funeral for her husband, and the differences of opinions she has with her Japanese-born son. The troupe chose this musical to celebrate the Friendship Year.

Item: After threatening to cut friendship ties due to the Takeshima/Dokto dispute , North Kyeongsang Province in South Korea invited Shimane Prefecture Governor Nobuyoshi Sumita to a May ceremony for the opening of the office of the Association of Northeast Asia Regional Governments. Shimane Prefecture is the jurisdiction in Japan with nominal authority over Takeshima. The same prefectural government upset the Koreans by declaring a Takeshima Day.

Despite the dire warnings of ruptured relations, the Friendship Year is still on track for success. Korean organizers scheduled more than 460 events for the Friendship Year in South Korea. A few, such a kabuki performance slated for Seoul, have been postponed for six months, but the bulk of the schedule is intact. In fact, only 10 of the events have been canceled.

One of the axed events was the screening of the animated feature, Hotaru no Haka (The Firefly’s Grave). The Japanese wanted to know the reasons for the cancellation, as Japanese animated films have a good reputation in South Korea, and the South Korean committee responsible for the year’s events approved the movie. The Korean PR company’s answer lifted the rock that exposed the wormy slugs to the sunlight.

Hotaru no Haka is the story of a 14-year-old orphan and his four-year-old sister in Kobe as they struggle to survive in the devastation of Japan at the end of World War II. Some Koreans objected to the film because it depicted Japanese suffering in the postwar period. They were incensed by the idea that Japanese could have been victims too.

“My suffering is worse than your suffering” is a consumptive, weevily game to play. Sixty years of Japanese behavior has demonstrated that the country learned its lessons from defeat. The war killed three million Japanese—500,000 civilians—and eliminated $26 billion of national wealth. It obliterated the Japanese empire for good and negated the influence of the military in society.

American air raids destroyed 25% of Japanese housing and 42% of urban industrial areas. An air raid on Tokyo in March 1945 using incendiaries killed 100,000 alone. The American air force designed the bombing pattern to obstruct people from seeking refuge in the river. Two atomic weapons continued to create victims decades after the bombs fell. (Check the link for one man’s story about his life after the bombing.) The Allied forces did everything but spread salt in the ground, as the Romans did at Carthage to prevent their enemies from rising again.

For some to face the fact that the Japanese paid their price and learned their lessons from the war would knock the struts from their emotional superstructure. It would deny them the delicious thrill of forever playing the victim and demonizing their oppressors. No more could they enjoy the surge of anger and passion as they relived events of their great-grandparents’ day. Gone would be the delight of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending the air with anguished cries of aikhu!

Recognizing that the enemy was a human being who suffered terribly for his sins deprives one of the pleasures of hatred. Why, that would spoil the fun.

It would kill the buzz.