The End of Pax Americana, and the Crisis of Constitutional Democracy in Japan, 2

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Proposal Application

Abstract

In East Asia today, we are facing the end of Pax Americana that was established with the Peace Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. Together with the inauguration of the United Nations (1945), the treaty was to re-establish in the Pacific region the system of international law that had been destroyed twice in the 20th century. Sixty five years later, we are facing a situation in which many peoples in the western Pacific are waiting for a new international order to emerge.
There are indeed many consequences of the end of Pax Americana. One of the most conspicuous is the rise of jingoism in Japan in recent decades, in which the Japanese Government openly wishes to discard the historical views upon which peoples in East Asia and the United States built mutual understanding, and to return to the Cold War policy of containment while resurrecting the glorious image of the Japanese Empire that was supposed to have perished at the end of the war.
We will discuss the end of Pax Americana in the western Pacific from the following problematics.
1) The American hegemony served as the environment to foster a number of new nation-states to emerge in East Asia. But, how could nationalisms of these nations be nurtured and sustained by such global hegemony, which was colonial in nature even though the United States has persistently insisted on its anti-colonial posture?
2) When Japan was defeated at the end of WWII, a consensus was established, not only within the Japanese nation but also among peoples of East Asia, that Japanese Imperialism was the reason why Asian peoples could not accept Japanese domination. How could the glorious image of the Japanese Empire be allowed to persist within Japan under Pax Americana?
3) How should they denounce and disqualify the revisionist history of East Asia as promoted by the Japanese Government in recent years? In this respect, the problem of the Comfort Women is crucial. How can peoples of East Asia forge historical narratives that can recognize the many victims of the past and criticize atrocities committed by colonial powers?

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Naoki Sakai, Cornell University

Chair

• Joyce Chi-hui Liu, National Chiao Tung University

Discussants

• Jon Douglas Solomon, Université Jean Moulin

• Jie-Hyun Lim, Hanyang University

• Naoki Sakai, Cornell University

• Peichen Wu, National Chengchi University