by Ken Liu
the People's Republic argues? Or perhaps we should treat the past as
something held in trust for all of humanity by the United Nations?
The Chinese view would have had the support of most of the
Western world—the Japanese position is akin to Germany arguing
that attempts to travel to Auschwitz - Birekenau between 1939 and
1945 should be subject to its approval —but for the fact that it is the
People's Republic of China, a Western pariah, which is now making
the claim . And so you see how the present and the past will strangle
each other to death.
Moreover, behind both the Japanese and the Chinese positions is
the unquestioned assumption that if we can resolve whether China or
Japan has sovereignty over World War Two - era Harbin, then either
the People's Republic or the present Japanese government would be
the right authority to exercise that sovereignty . But this is far from
clear . Both sides have problems making the legal case.
First, Japan has always argued, when it comes to Chinese claims
for compensation for war - time atrocities, that the present Japan,
founded on the Constitution drafted by America, cannot be the
responsible party . Japan believes that those claims are against its
predecessor government, the Empire of Japan, and all such claims have
been resolved by the Treaty of San Francisco and other bilateral
treaties . But if that is so, for Japan now to assert sovereignty over that
era in Manchuria, when it has previously disavowed all responsibility
for it, is more than a little inconsistent.
But the People's Republic is not home free either. At the time
Japanese forces took control of Manchuria in 1932, it was only
nominally under the control of the Republic of China, the entity that
we think of as the “ official ” China during the Second World War, and
the People's Republic of China did not even exist . It is true that during
the War, armed resistance in Manchuria to the Japanese occupation
came almost entirely from the Han Chinese, Manchu, and Korean
guerillas led by Chinese and Korean Communists. But these guerillas
were not under the real direction of the Chinese Communist Party led
by Mao Zedong, and so had little to do with the eventual founding of
the People's Republic.
So why should we think that either the present government of
Japan or China has any claim to Harbin during that era? Wouldn't
the Republic of China, which now resides in Taipei and calls itself
Taiwan, have a more legitimate claim? Or perhaps we should conjure
up a “ Provisional Historical Manchurian Authority ” to assume
jurisdiction over it?
Our doctrines concerning the succession of states, developed under
the Westphalian framework, simply cannot deal with these questions
raised by Dr. Wei's experiments.
If th ese debates have a clinical and evasive air to them, that is
intentional. “Sovereignty, ” “jurisdiction, ” and similar words have
always been mere conveniences to allow people to evade responsibility
or to sever inconvenient bonds. “Independence ” is declared , and
suddenly the past is forgotten; a “ revolution ” occurs, and suddenly
memories and blood debts are wiped clean; a treaty is signed, and
suddenly the past is buried and gone . Real life does not work like that.
However you want to parse the robber's logic that we dignify
under the name “ international law, ” the fact remains that the people
who call themselves Japanese today are connected to those who called
themselves Japanese in Manchuria in 1937, and the people who call
themselves Chinese today are connected to those who called
themselves Chinese there and then . These are the messy realities, and
we make do with what we are given.
All along, we have made international law work only by assuming
that the past would remain silent. But Dr. Wei has given the past a
voice, and made dead memories come alive. What role, if any, we wish
to give the voices of the past in the present is up to us.
Evan always called me Tóngyě Míngměi , or just Míngměi , which are
the Mandarin readings for the kanji that are used to write my name
( 桐野明美). Although this is the customary way to pronounce
Japanese names in Chinese, he's the only Chinese I've ever permitted
that liberty to.
Akemi Kirino:
Saying my name like that, he told me, allowed him to picture it in
those old characters that are the common heritage of China and Japan,
and thus keep in mind their meaning. The way he saw it, “the sound of
a name doesn't tell you anything about the person, only the characters
do.”
My name was the first thing he loved about me.
“ A paulownia tree alone in the field, bright and beautiful, ” he said
to me, the first time we met at a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
mixer.
That was also how my grandfather explained my name to me,
years earlier, when he taught me how to write the characters in my
name as a little girl. A paulownia is a pretty, deciduous tree, and in old
Japan it was the custom to plant one when a baby girl was born and
make a dresser out of the wood for her trousseau when she got
married. I remember the first time my grandfathe r showed me the
paulownia that he had planted for me the day I was born, and I told
him that I didn't think it looked very special.
“ But a paulownia is the only tree on which a phoenix would land
and rest, ” my grandfather then said, stroking my hair in that slow,
gentle way that he had that I loved. I nodded, and I was glad that I had
such a special tree for my name.
Until Evan spoke to me, I hadn't thought about that day with my
grandfather in years.
“ Have you found your phoenix yet?” Evan asked, and then he
asked me out.
Evan wasn't shy, not like most Chinese men I knew. I felt at ease
listening to him. And he seemed genuinely happy about his life, which
was rare among the grad students and made it fun to be around him.
In a way it was natural that we woul d be drawn to each other . We
had both come to America as young children, and knew something
about the meaning of growing up as outsiders trying hard to become
Americans. It made it easy for us to appreciate each other's foibles, the
little corners of our personalities that remained defiantly fresh - off- the-boat.
He wasn't intimidated by the fact that I had a much better sense
about numbers, statistics, the “ hard ” qualities in life . Some of my old
boyfriends used to tell me that my focus on the quantifiable and the
logic of mathematics made me seem cold and unfeminine. It didn't
help that I knew my way around power tools better than most of
them —a necessary skill for a lab physicist . Evan was the only man I
knew who was perfectly happy to defer to me when I to ld him that I
could do something requiring mechanical skills better than he could.
Memories of our courtship have grown hazy with time, and are
now coated with the smooth, golden glow of sentiment—but t
hey are
all that I have left. If ever I am allowed to run my machine again, I
would like to go back to those times.
I liked driving with him to bed-and-breakfasts up in New
Hampshire in the fall to pick apples. I liked making simple dishes from
a book of recipes and seeing that silly grin on his face . I liked waking
up next to him in the mornings and feeling happy that I was a woman .
I liked that he could argue passionately with me and hold his ground
when he was right and back down gracefully when he was wrong. I
liked that he always took my side whenever I was in an argument with
others, and backed me up to the hilt, even when he thought I was
wrong.
But the best part was when he talked to me about the history of
Japan.
Actually, he gave me an interest in Japan that I never had. Growing
up, whenever people fo und out that I was Japanese they assumed that I
would be interested in anime, love karaoke, and giggle into my cupped
hands, and the boys, in particular, thought I would act out their
Oriental sex fantasies. It was tiring. As a teenager, I rebelled by
refusing to do anything that seemed “ Japanese, ” including speaking
Japanese at home . Just imagine how my poor parents felt.
Evan told the history of Japan to me not as a recitation of dates or
myths, but as an illustration of scientific principles embedded in
humanity. He showed me that the history of Japan is not a story about
emperors and generals, poets and monks . Rather, the history of Japan
is a model demonstrating the way all human societies grow and adapt
to the natural w orld as the environment, in turn, adapts to their
presence.
As hunter- gatherers, the ancient Jōmon Japanese were the top
predators in their environment; as self- sufficient agriculturalists, the
Japanese of the Nara and Heian periods began to shape and cultivate
the ecology of Japan into a human - centric symbiotic biota, a process
that wasn't completed until the intensive agriculture and population
growth that came with feudal Japan; finally, as industrialists and
entrepreneurs, the people of Imperial Japan began to exploit not
merely the living biota, but also the dead biota of the past: the drive for
reliable sources of fossil fuels would dominate the history of modern
Japan, as it has the rest of the modern world . We are all now exploiters
of the dead.
Clea ring away the superficial structure of the reigns of emperors
and the dates of battles, there was the deeper rhythm of history's ebb
and flow not as the deeds of great men, but as lives lived by ordinary
men and women wading through the currents of the nat ural world
around them: its geology, its seasons, its climate and ecology, the
abundance and scarcity of the raw material for life . It was the kind of
history that a physicist could love.
Japan was at once universal and unique . Evan made me aware of
the co nnection between me and the people who have called them selves
Japanese for millennia.
Yet, history was not merely deep patterns and the long now . There
was also a time and a place where individuals could leave an
extraordinary impact. Evan's specialty was the Heian Period, he told
me, because that was when Japan first became Japan. A courtly elite of
at most a few thousand people transformed continental influences into
a uniquely native, Japanese aesthetic ideal that would reverberate
throughout the centuri es and define what it meant to be Japanese until
the present day. Unique among the world's ancient cultures, the high
culture of Heian Japan was made as much by women as by men. It was
a golden age as lovely as it was implausible, unrepeatable . That was the
kind of surprise that made Evan love history.
Inspired, I took a Japanese history class, and asked my father to
teach me calligraphy. I took a new interest in advanced Japanese
language classes, and I learned to write tanka, the clean, minimalist
Japanes e poems that follow strict, mathematical metrical requirements .
When I was finally satisfied with my first attempt, I was so happy, and
I'm certain that I did, for a moment, feel what Murasaki Shikibu felt
when she completed her first tanka. More than a millennium in time
and more than ten thousand miles in space separated us, but there, in
that moment, we would surely have understood each other.
Evan made me proud to be Japanese, and so he made me love
myself. That was how I knew I was really in love wit h him.
The War has been over for a long time, and at some point you
have to move on. What is the point of digging up memories like this
now? Japanese investment in China has been very important for jobs,
and all the young people in China like Japanese culture . I don't like it
that Japan does not want to apologize, but what can we do? If we
dwell on it, then only we will be angry and sad.
Li Jianjian, Manager, Tianjin Sony Store:
I read about it in the newspapers. That Dr. Wei is not Chinese;
he's an American . The Chinese all know about Unit 731, so it's not
news to us.
Song Yuanwu, waitress:
I don't want to think about it much . Some stupid young people
shout about how we should boycott Japanese goods but then they can't
wait to buy the next issue of manga. Why should I listen to them?
This just upsets people without accomplishing anything.
Truth be told, the people who were killed there in Harbin were
mostly peasants, and they died like weeds during that time all over
China. Bad things happen in wars, that's all.
Name withheld, executive:
What I'm going to say will make everyone hate me, but many
people also died during the Three Years of Natural Disasters under
the Chairman and then during the Cultural Revolution . The War is
sad, but it is just one sadness among many for the Chinese . The bulk
of China's sorrow lies unmourned . That Dr. Wei is a stupid
troublemaker. You can't eat, drink, or wear memories.
Nie Liang and Fang Rui, college students:
Nie: I'm glad that Wei did his work. Japan has never faced up to its
history . Every Chinese knows that these things happened, but
Westerners don't, and they don't care. Maybe now that they know the
truth they'll put pressure on Japan to apologize.
Fang : Be careful, Nie. When Westerners see this, they are going to
call you a fenqing and a brainwashed nationalist. They like Japan in the
West. China, not so much. The Westerners don't want to understand
China. Maybe they just can't. We have nothing to say to these
journalists . They won't believe us anyway.
I don't know who Wei is, and I don't care.
Sun Maying, office worker:
Evan and I wanted to go see a movie that night. The romantic
comedy we wanted was sold out, and so we chose the movie with the
next earliest start time . It was called Philosophy of a Knife . Neither of
us had heard of it . We just wanted to spend some time together.
Akemi Kirino:
Our lives are ruled by these small, seemingly ordinary moments
that turn out to have improbably large effects . Such randomness is
much more common in human affairs than in nature, and there was no
way that I, as a physicist, could have foreseen what happened next.
[Scenes from Andrey Iskanov's Philosophy of a Knife are shown as Dr.
Kirino speaks.]
The movie was a graphical portrayal of the activities of Unit 731,
with many of the experiments reenacted . “ God created heaven, men
created hell” was the tag line.
Neither of us could get up at the end of it. “ I didn't know, ” Evan
murmured to me. “ I'm sorry . I didn't know.”
He was not apologizing for taking me to the movie. Inst ead, he
was consumed by guilt because he had not known about the horrors
committed by Unit 731. He had never encountered it in his classes or
in his research . Because his grandparents had taken refuge in Shanghai
during the War, no one in his family was di rectly affected.
But due to their employment with the puppet government in
Japanese- occupied Shanghai, his grandparents were later labeled
collaborationists after the War, and their harsh treatment at the hands
of the government of the People's Republic e ventually caused his
family to flee for the United States. And so the War shaped Evan's life,
as it has shaped the lives of all Chinese, even if he was not aware of all
of its ramifications.
For Evan, ignorance of history, a history that determined who he
was in many ways, was a sin in itself.
“ It's just a film, ” our friends told him . “ Fiction. ”
But in that moment, history as he understood it ended for Evan.
The distance he had once maintained, the abstractions of history at a
grand scale, which had so delighted him before, lost meaning to him in
the bloody scenes on the screen.
He began to dig into the truth behind the film, and it soon
consumed all his waking moments. He became obsessed with the
activities of Unit 731. It became his waking life and his nightmare . For
him, his ignorance of those horrors was simultaneously a rebuke and a
call to arms . He could not let the victims' suffering be forgotten. He
would not allow their torturers to get away.
That was when I explained to him the possibilities presented by
Bohm- Kirino particles.
