This study proposes a theoretical framework to understand how nations deal with collective memories of perpetration of severe human rights violations, which do not fit comfortably in any national master narrative but have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Building on studies of collective memory, the framework explicates how initial historical conditions of the nation, domestic social movements, and the degree of international pressures move the national discourse along two key dimensions – (a) acceptance of guilt and (b) international orientation of the discourse – which map out seven possible responses to collective trauma of perpetration. Through examination of the history of post-war Japan and content analyses of newspaper editorials and prime ministers’ speeches from 1945 to 2004, the empirical analysis applies the framework to the Japanese case and reveals

1. that arguments for apologies to Asian victims have gained ground due to the intensification of domestic social movements, international pressures from neighboring countries, and global human rights influence; and
   
2. that arguments that evade the ugly past have persisted because of the initial conditions immediately after 1945, overwhelming emphasis on Japanese victims in the first few decades, and recent appropriation of human rights language by proponents of the defensive arguments.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan. His research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. He has conducted cross-national statistical analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. His current projects examine (a) the evolution of transnational social movement organizations, (b) global expansion of corporate social responsibility, (c) changing conceptions of nationhood and minority rights in national constitutions, (d) dynamics of political identities in contemporary Europe, (e) global human rights and three ethnic minority social movements in Japan, and (f) changing discourse around the Asia-Pacific War in Japan.

While representations of history are very common in Western film and television, in East Asia we find the perhaps unique genre of history ‘soap operas’ that portray influential political figures of the past rather than fictitious characters, describing their lives in intimate personal detail in the format of a lengthy ‘soap’, often broadcast daily. Some use their heroes and heroines/villains and villainesses simply as a set on which to stage romantic or other interesting stories (historic settings are extremely popular in East Asia); others claim to present ‘authentic’ history, and may lead to considerable controversy, especially in authoritarian states, such as the People’s Republic of China, where history is an extremely sensitive subject. In recent years in particular, some of these soaps have drastically revised official verdicts on a number of historical figures, stirring intense public debate and triggering government interference and censorship.

Matthias Niedenführ analyzes East Asian history soap operas, especially those from China, both in light of recent political and social changes and in comparison with “histotainment” (history entertainment) on German television, where historical dramas tend to come in the form of miniseries and to be paired with documentary broadcasts. While there is clearly less official scrutiny in the case of German television productions than in those of China, it is shown that revisiting hitherto accepted ‘truths’ or problematizing the personalities and actions of history’s ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ may be highly contested in both totalitarian states and multi-party democracies.

Matthias Niedenführ is the Director of the European Centre for Chinese Studies, a consortium of four German and Danish universities based at Peking University. Prior to his move to Beijing, he was the co-ordinator for the Confucius Institute in Nuremberg and a research fellow at the University of Erlangen, working on a major international project on national identities and historical revisionism in East Asia. He has degrees in Asian Studies and Economics, with a particular interest in the Chinese and Japanese media. His current research projects focus on the representation of history in the mass media, and on the internationalization of the Chinese economy.

The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Financial globalization means that most countries and regions are not immune to the contagious effects of a financial crisis that originates in one country.

East Asian countries had already experienced the contagious effects of a financial crisis in 1997. That year, a financial crisis that broke out in Thailand and Indonesia reached Malaysia and then South Korea. Each of these countries reacted differently to the crisis. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand accepted International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities that required neoliberal economic restructuring in return for emergency loans, while Malaysia rejected the IMF offer and instead encouraged the inflow of speculative financial capital, while reforming the banking and financial system. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis, regional economic, financial and security cooperation were discussed among East Asian countries. These efforts resulted in the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Bond Initiative, the East Asian Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Six Party Talks.

Thus, regionalism in East Asia was revived in response to external shocks, such as global financial volatility, endogenous opportunities such as East Asian market compatibility (Pempel, 2008), endogenous security threats such as the North Korean nuclear development, and exogenous opportunities such as "bringing in the U.S." (Pempel, 2008).

Nonetheless, East Asian regionalism is still at a low level of institutionalization compared to Europe. East Asian regionalism is still basically "bottom-up, corporate (market)-driven regionalism" (Pempel, 2005). 

I will discuss the obstacles and the opportunities that Northeast Asian countries are facing since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization.

Hyug Baeg Im is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Dean at the Graduate School of Policy Studies and Director at Institute for Peace Studies. He received B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He was visiting professor at Georgetown University (1995-1996), Duke University (1997), Stanford University (2002-2003) and visiting fellow at International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC (1995-1996). He served as a presidential adviser of both Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidency. His current research focuses on the impact of IT revolution and globalization on Korean democracy. His publications include “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1987), “South Korean Democratic Consolidation in Comparative Perspective” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “’Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan: Myth and Reality,” (co-authored with Kim, Byung Kook) Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), “Faltering Democratic Consolidation in South Korea: Democracy at the End of Three Kims Era” Democratization, Vol. 11, No. 5(2004), “Christian Churches and Democratization in South Korea” in Tun-jen Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (eds.), Religious Organizations and Democratization: Comparative Case Studies in Contemporary Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) and “The US Role in Korean Democracy and Security since Cold War Era,” International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol. 6, No.2 (2006).

Japan's industrial landscape is characterized by hierarchical forms of industry organization that are increasingly inadequate in modern sectors, where innovation relies on platforms and horizontal ecosystems of firms producing complementary products. Using three case studies--software, animation and mobile telephony--two key sources of inefficiencies that this mismatch can create will be illustrated.

First, hierarchical industry organizations can "lock out" certain types of innovation indefinitely by perpetuating established business practices. Second, even when the vertical hierarchies produce highly innovative sectors in the domestic market, the exclusively domestic orientation of the "hierarchical industry leaders" can entail large missed opportunities for other members of the ecosystem, who are unable to fully exploit their potential in global markets.

Dr. Hagiu will argue that Japan has to adopt several key measures in order to address these inefficiencies and capitalize on its innovation: strengthening antitrust and intellectual property rights enforcement; improving the legal infrastructure (e.g. producing more business law attorneys); lowering barriers to entry for foreign investment and facilitating the development of the venture capital sector.

Andrei Hagiu is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy group at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on multi-sided markets, which feature platforms serving two or more distinct groups of customers, who value each other's participation. He is studying the business strategies used by such platforms and the structure of the industries in which they operate: payment systems, advertising supported media, personal computers, videogames, mobile devices, shopping malls, etc. Hagiu is using the insights derived from this research to advise a wide range of companies in all of these industries.

In addition, he is also involved in competition and industrial policy research and advisory projects, in Japan, China and in the United States. He graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et Adminstration Economique in France with an MS in economics and statistics, before obtaining a PhD in economics from Princeton University in 2004. Prior to joining HBS, he spent 18 months in Tokyo as a fellow at the Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry, an economic policy think-tank affiliated with the Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry.

This event is presented in conjunction with the Japan Society of Northern California.