The Politics of Future in Bilateral Summitry

Abstract

The previous chapter explored the reproduction of Japanese self and Korean otherness through the politics of memory. The textbook controversies; the waffling over comfort women; and the 1995 Diet Resolution, were all utilized to narrate the Past as one ineluctable facet of bilateral relations that cannot be wished away, but instead, returns to haunt generations of policy elites in Tokyo. The Past is an integral part of Japan-South Korea bilateral relationship replicated throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. The recurrent demands for apologies from the Republic of Korea (ROK) constitute a familiar landscape for Tokyo in which a Japanese prime minister issues an “apology” to be “accepted” by a South Korean president, followed by a debate over the wording of recompense.