My name is Lee and I came from Korea.
I understand that the original title of today's first session was "What is Asia?".
As one of the commentators, I found Prof. Shiraishi's speech very stimulating and enlightening. Now that I'm in a position to comment upon or respond to it, however, it is extremely difficult to react immediately since the scale of the discussion is too large. Therefore, I have been hesitating on what to speak about. Moreover, despite my understanding that during the course of the two days of sessions, we would start the first session with a general discussion about Asia and then raise its tension gradually to the current crisis, we have already started discussing hot topics related to the current crisis.
As our chairperson is an economist, he might have urged this, but I would like to go back to the starting point based on his suggestion and stay there to talk a little more about what Asia is. In my understanding, the point of Prof. Shiraishi's speech today would be that Asia has its own rhythm; that if you think of either the modernization or the change in some international systems in three time spans, you will see more clearly that Asia has come up with its peculiar rhythm; that you should discover and take note of it. In conclusion, I have to say with all due respect that I agree 60% with him and I can't agree to the other 40%.
Now I would like to explain what exactly I mean. Before that, I should like to point out one thing. Although, Prof. Shiraishi didn't mention it clearly, I noticed that when you call Asia or Southeast Asia, or Asian Pacific for the expanded area with a choice as to whether you add a slash between Asia and Pacific or not, you will find there are keen political issues and political characteristics, or historical meaning and character in the act of naming, raising an underlying question.
Focusing on Southeast Asia in particular which is his specialty, he seemed to have strongly pointed out that the name of Southeast Asia itself was created artificially in a certain sense, or it was rather a product of American strategy for the Cold War. That is to say that before the Cold War, Asia almost stood for China according to American perception of Asia since 19th century. With the Cold War starting, China was regarded as the counterpart and the rest of the region which was originally a part of the Chinese world has been intentionally separated and named as Southeast Asia. This might be a highly political argument. Although it seems to be only a geographical matter the very concept in choosing the name between Asia and Southeast Asia could be in vogue words the "political construct" or the "historical construct". It is built up by many elements such as our historical consciousness, certain sense of values, or hidden agendas. I assume these are the points stressed by Prof. Shiraishi. Having such a conception, you might find this symposium rather controversial, with conflicting ideas amicably disposed. However, the general session bears the name of Asia, we have Australian the group without any doubt the English translation says, "East Asia" for the next economic session, and Prof. Yamazaki used the notion of "Asian Pacific" or "Pacific Rim Community". As you see, on the actual international politics scene, the choice of term reflects national or other various interests which are opposing each other. That is what I would like to recall now.
I suppose that our host intended to bring about friendship by putting these names, but I think we should keep in mind why we stick to or put forward the name Asia. This might be related to the next discussion, but it is undeniable that a certain nationalistic defiance or feeling against the IMF deal for the economic crisis is increasing especially among Koreans and gradually among Japanese. As many other people are repeatedly saying, this defiance is due to the fact that so-called global standards with globalization mean in most cases American standards with Americanization. I think it is true in certain sense, but in order to oppose that, we need to clarify what Asian values are, or what Asia is, as well as their meaning including Asian values and Asian ways, and when speaking of Asia, you have to think of whose Asia, for whom and for what it stands. Therefore, I have focused a little on the name problem first. Otherwise there might have been a risk that we would excessively minimize the Asian value which has certain universality and peculiarity as Prof. Yamazaki clearly put it this morning, and that we would minimize the universality as Asia and its Americanization, or define globalization as Americanization, which might result in unreasonably narrow concept of Asia as a counterpart.
As I can only discuss broadly, I should like to make introductory remarks by positioning what I spoke of just now as the first part of my comment. Now I'd like to specify a couple of points regarding Prof. Shiraishi's speech. If I understand correctly his idea, the first one was like this: When you see the last 50 years in which Asia finds is position in
