China, Japan, and Shifting Narratives of War

Lewis Eves

Source Link

The recent 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II inspired multiple publications on how Japan remembers its wartime history. However, there has been less said about the countries that Japan fought and their historical narratives of the war, nor how these countries’ narratives align with Japan’s understanding of its wartime history.

In particular, China’s understanding of its war against Japan has changed significantly over the decades. Alongside Japan’s changing historical narratives of the war, this has caused a divergence in historical memory that fuels tensions between the two countries – and makes hostility more likely.

China’s Narratives of the War

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has encouraged two distinctive historical narratives of the war. The CCP’s governing legitimacy is closely linked with World War II; the Chinese Civil War (1945-49), in which the CCP defeated their political rivals to establish control over China, was born out of World War II. While the CCP did fight against the Japanese invaders, they focused on developing their powerbase while the Kuomintang or Nationalists (who served as China’s wartime government) bore the brunt of China’s war effort. Accordingly, weakened by the war against Japan, the Nationalists were less able to resist communist forces.

The Maoist narrative of the war was dominant in China from the formation of the People’s Republic in 1949 until the early 1980s. It was rooted in communist ideology and blamed the war on a militaristic international bourgeois elite who tricked the Japanese people into a war against China.

At the same time, the Maoist narrative portrayed China’s wartime Nationalist government as incompetent in resisting Japan’s invasion and highlighted the efforts of the CCP’s resistance, particularly those of the Eighth Route Army led by Mao Zedong. This is despite historical records from the war indicating that, out of 23 battles and over 40,000 skirmishes between China and Japan, the CCP’s forces only participated in one and 200 of these, respectively.