The Pedagogy of Antagonism: What Japan and South Korea Teach Us About Division and the Power of Education
By Ben Whitehouse ’26
A Japanese pupil may learn that his or her nation’s actions during the early 20th century did not constitute an “invasion,” but rather an “advancement.” [1] A Korean pupil may also come into contact with this notion, albeit with a certain caveat. For him or her, it was the Japanese who were set on absorbing Korea’s “advanced” culture to supplement a technologically weak, backward state. [2] Both students are learning about societal, cultural, and technological progression. Yet their worldviews, shaped by the educational materials and social environments in which they were raised, could not be more disparate.
This divide in historical remembrance encapsulates Japan-Korea relations, a concept so nuanced it could never be appropriately summarized. This paper does not intend to take on such an impractical problem. Rather, it aspires to uncover—and emphasize—a proliferating dilemma of a globalizing and rapidly changing world. To do so requires a brief, though careful, examination of a central component of the Japanese-Korean clash of remembrance.
No issue is quite as contentious as that of the wartime “comfort” women. South Korea has long demanded that Japan acknowledge the existence of “the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking and sexual slavery in modern history,” accept legal responsibility, issue formal apologies, and pay extensive reparations. [3] Despite occasional efforts to do so (including a failed 2015 deal under the government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe), little lasting progress has been made. [4] While it may be easy to attribute such shortcomings to changing governments and right-wing antagonists, doing so risks a dangerous minimization of more foundational inhibitors to lasting reconciliation. [5] In particular, a failure to identify education as a preeminent force for the prolongation of antagonism belies the opportunity to discuss a long-undervalued element of global affairs. In regard to “comfort women,” Japanese educational institutions and curriculum designers have largely left the issue relegated to the sidelines—if not completely ignored. [6] Defended as a movement to protect Japanese schoolchildren from potentially uncomfortable and unsettling narratives, references to comfort women in Japanese school textbooks are few and far between. [7] This phenomenon is made more striking by the observed regression in acknowledgement. Spurred by Nobukatsu Fujioka and his organization, the Japanese Society of History Textbook Reform, references to Korean comfort women have dramatically decreased since the turn of the century. [8] While undoubtedly significant in its own right, the reduction in Japanese concessions is only exacerbated by an accompanying explosion in the discussion of comfort women within Korean textbooks. Proposed as a way to counter Japanese efforts to gloss over the history of crimes in the Korean Peninsula, these efforts have further widened the rift between the educational philosophies of the two nations. [9]
This push-and-pull —the action and reaction — is a characteristic of the growing divide in global education. As nations continue to move away from the colonial era and the age of American unipolar hegemony, incongruity in historical narratives has only become more pronounced. Just as the dispute over the educational acknowledgement of comfort women and forced laborers continues to have real consequences for the Japan-Korea relationship, global controversies materially shape how nations interact. [10]
Two distinct conclusions can be reached from the case study of Japan-Korea relations. First, the role of education in historical remembrance and the maintenance of hostilities is shown to be not only significant but underappreciated. Education, in shaping the next generation of voters, leaders, activists, and citizens, is the true battleground of memory. Second, the ability for memory to sustain conflict and prevent cooperation appears both evident and of ever-increasing consequence. As the world enters into yet another era of bipolar primacy (this time largely focused on economic concerns), historical remembrance will function as a force for division and resentment: a constant reminder of all that separates us.
Footnotes
Samuel Guex, “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea,” Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies, no. 4 (January 1, 2015), https://doi.org/10.4000/cjs.968.
Guex, “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea.”
Beverly Milner Bisland, Jimin Kim, and Sunghee Shin, “Teaching about the Comfort Women during World War II and the Use of Personal Stories of the Victims,” Association for Asian Studies, 2019, https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/teaching-about-the-comfort-women-during-world-war-ii-and-the-use-of-personal-stories-of-the-victims/.
Justin McCurry, “Japan and South Korea Agree to Settle Wartime Sex Slaves Row,” the Guardian (The Guardian, December 28, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/japan-to-say-sorry-to-south-korea-in-deal-to-end-dispute-over-wartime-sex-slaves?.
Robert O’Mochain and Yuki Ueno, “Japan’s ‘Big Lie’: The Negation of Oral Testimony of Sexual Violence,” Dignity 9, no. 2 (August 2008), https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1400&context=dignity.
Guex, “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea.”
Kathleen Woods Masalski, “FSI | SPICE - Examining the Japanese History Textbook Controversies,” spice.fsi.stanford.edu, November 2001, https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/examining_the_japanese_history_textbook_controversies#2.
Guex, “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea.”
Guex, “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea.”
Samuel Goodman, John VerWey, and Dan Kim, “The South Korea-Japan Trade Dispute in Context: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Chemicals, and Concentrated Supply Chains,” SSRN Electronic Journal, October 2019, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3470271.
References
Bisland, Beverly Milner, Jimin Kim, and Sunghee Shin. “Teaching about the Comfort Women during World War II and the Use of Personal Stories of the Victims.” Association for Asian Studies, 2019. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/teaching-about-the-comfort-women-during-world-war-ii-and-the-use-of-personal-stories-of-the-victims/.
Cumings, Bruce. “Korea, a Unique Colony: Last to Be Colonized and First to Revolt – the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.” The Asia Pacific Journal, November 1, 2021. https://apjjf.org/2021/21/cumings.
Goodman, Samuel, John VerWey, and Dan Kim. “The South Korea-Japan Trade Dispute in Context: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Chemicals, and Concentrated Supply Chains.” SSRN Electronic Journal, October 2019. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3470271.
Guex, Samuel. “The History Textbook Controversy in Japan and South Korea.” Cipango - French Journal of Japanese Studies, no. 4 (January 1, 2015). https://doi.org/10.4000/cjs.968.
History News Network. “Nobukatsu Fujioka: What the Founder of the Textbook Reform Movement Wants Students to Learn,” April 22, 2005. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/nobukatsu-fujioka-what-the-founder-of-the-textbook.
Masalski, Kathleen Woods. “FSI | SPICE - Examining the Japanese History Textbook Controversies.” spice.fsi.stanford.edu, November 2001. https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/examining_the_japanese_history_textbook_controversies#2.
McCurry, Justin. “Japan and South Korea Agree to Settle Wartime Sex Slaves Row.” the Guardian. The Guardian, December 28, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/japan-to-say-sorry-to-south-korea-in-deal-to-end-dispute-over-wartime-sex-slaves?.
O’Mochain, Robert, and Yuki Ueno. “Japan’s ‘Big Lie’: The Negation of Oral Testimony of Sexual Violence.” Dignity 9, no. 2 (August 2008). https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1400&context=dignity.
Ox.ac.uk. “Confronting the Past through History Education | University of Oxford,” 2021. https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research-impact/confronting-past-through-history-education.
Sand, Jordan, and Jordan Sand. “Historians and Public Memory in Japan: The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy.” History and Memory 11, no. 2 (1999): 116–28. https://doi.org/10.2979/his.1999.11.2.116.
Song, Jiwon. “South Korea’s Top Court Orders a 3rd Japanese Company to Compensate Workers for Forced Labor.” AP News, December 28, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-japan-forced-labor-compensation-ruling-67c952a871f99ed9ff0c137c3c94bb7e?.