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Japan’s Transition to New Imperial Era Brings New Sino-Japanese Relations 〜From ‘Heisei’ to ‘Reiwa’〜

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Photo credit: AFP

As Japan is seeing a historic shift in its monarchy, Japan and China are also trying to shift their relations from “competition to cooperation.”

On April 30th and May 1st, Japan will hold an extraordinary important event. The current Japanese Emperor Akihito will abdicate and the Crown Prince Naruhito will enthrone. Japan is believed to have 125 Emperors over 2680 years before new Emperor so that transition of Emperor itself is not abnormal. However, given that the Emperor has lifetime tenure, abdication is exceptional; this time, the current Emperor decided to step down by his own will and new Emperor will come when the previous Emperor is alive, which is the first time in 202 years. Transition of Emperor also means the transition into new imperial era because Japan adopts different era names for different Emperors. Present time is ‘Heisei’ era and new time starting from May 1st 2019 will be ‘Reiwa’ era.

As Heisei (平成) means “realization of peace”, Heisei era, which lasted about 30 years from January 8th 1989 to April 30th 2019, was marked with the absence of war for Japan. Japan did not directly engage in any conflicts or wars; this was only in Heisei era after the modernization of Japan following the Meiji Restoration. The Emperor Akihito was also active in promoting peaceful relations with other countries. For example, the Emperor made a Japanese Emperor’s very first visit to China in 1992 as a part of such efforts.

However, Heisei era actually faced many challenges for Sino-Japanese relations. The very first year of Heisei era was welcomed by the Tiananmen Square Incident which led to the beginning of “ice age” for Sino-Japanese relations. Japan imposed sanctions on China and the incident decisively changed Japanese people’s impression on China. For example, Japanese people used to have much friendlier attitude toward China before 1989, but their negative impression on China dramatically increased after 1989. According to the Japanese Cabinet Office’s survey on Japan’s public opinion about China, 1989 was a turning point when Japanese people’s impression on China got much severer. This can never return to as positive impression as before yet. Then at the beginning of 21st century, Japan and China faced the Yasukuni shrine issue. Junichiro Koizumi who was a Japanese prime minister from 2001 to 2006 visited controversial Yasukuni shrine every year during his term. The Yasukuni shrine commemorates those who died in the wars after the Meiji Restoration, also including “war criminals” from World War II. That is why Japanese prime minister’s visit to the shrine was perceived unacceptable for China and this issue caused strong pushback from China. In 2005, Chinese people who were also irritated with a Japanese history textbook issue and Japan’s initiative to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council exploded their anger through anti-Japanese protests across China. Finally, Sino-Japanese relations reached the worst point since the end of World War II after confrontations over Senkaku/Diaoyu islands territorial issue. In 2010, Japan detained Chinese fishermen who “illegally” intruded into Japanese territorial water near the islands and made their boat collide with the patrol boats of Japan Coast Guard. This already made the tension between Japan and China very high. Then in September 2012, Japanese government decided to “nationalize” the islands after the case of Chinese activists’ landing on the islands in August, which led to complete destruction of the Sino-Japanese relations. Massive anti-Japanese protests took place in reportedly more than 80 cities in China, which also strengthened Japanese people’s anti-Chinese sentiment.

In this severest situation, the current Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe took an office in December 2012. However, he also visited the Yasukuni shrine in 2013, which made the worst relations even worse. Indeed, it was such a good timing for Abe to visit the shrine and maintain his domestic support from the conservative because Sino-Japanese relations were already too bad. On the other hand, China was important for Japan in terms of politics and economy so that Abe gradually started trying to restore Sino-Japanese relations. Abe stopped visiting the shrine after his visit in 2013 till today. However, Sino-Japanese relations were too bad to be quickly fixed; two nations’ leaders spent years in normalizing the relations through meeting opportunities at international summits such as G20 and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The relations came to a significant shift in 2018 when Japanese and Chinese prime ministers both made official visits to each country for the first time respectively in 7 and 8 years.

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Photo credit: Asahi Shimbun

Japan and China are since then gradually making progress to improve their relations. Along with Japanese Emperor’s transition, China recently announced that the deputy foreign minister Kong Xuanyou will be a new Chinese ambassador to Japan from May. And most importantly, Chinese president Xi Jinping revealed his plan to visit Japan for the first time in June 2019 for G20 Osaka summit. It is also reported that Abe invited Xi to pay a state visit to Japan in the autumn.

Heisei era is ending with efforts to fix Sino-Japanese relations and Reiwa era is beginning with hope to improve the relations. As Japan and China both have motivation and incentive to improve their relations, trajectory of Sino-Japanese relations would be relatively positive at least in short-term. However, Reiwa era will be a critical turning point for Japan and China to decide whether they become a real friend or a hostile enemy like a century ago because China is likely to become the most powerful country in the world and more assertively purse to achieve “Chinese Dream” by 100-year anniversary of the foundation of People’s Republic of China in 2049. This would cause more and more tensions and serious risk of conflicts with countries such as Japan and the United States.

Although recent improvement in Sino-Japanese relations is remarkable, unfortunately, it is only on the surface. Japan and China just stopped talking about the deep-rooted issues such as historical and territorial issues which they still face like before. Thus, their relations stay fragile. If Japan and China hope to foster more peaceful and stable relations, it is essential for them to work to solve these issues. However, it is also true that solving these highly political issues is very difficult and time-consuming. Therefore, civilian relations between Japan and China are extremely important. When governments have tensions, it is not desirable to have problems also between civilians. At least civilian relations should be stabilized so that it could work as deterrence for potential future conflicts. Even though Japan and China cannot discuss and solve the deep-rooted issues right away, they can look at good points of each other and accumulate cooperation. What Japan and China need is persistent efforts to achieve bottom-up improvement for more sustainable relations. Whether Reiwa (令和) era will be “beautiful and harmonious time” as translated or not depends on the people in this new era.