Session 2
Globalization and the Asian Cultural Dimension
Chairperson: Tamotsu AOKI (Japan)
Speaker: Anthony REID (Australia)
Speaker: Heita KAWAKATSU (Japan)
Commentator: Ashis NANDY (India)
Commentator: Yuko TANAKA (Japan)
｡?Chairperson: Tamotsu AOKI
Professor, Advanced Technologies Research Center, University of Tokyo
When it comes to Asia, the economy is the most serious and problematic now, and all the discussions so far tended to focus on economics.
It is of course important, but I'd like to view the present economic crisis as one stage of Asian history or an aspect in its cultural development. In this session, we are finally ready to discuss Asian culture.
Last August India marked the 50th anniversary of independence. I was in India at that time. This January Sri Lanka also celebrated the 50th anniversary and Prince Charles visited there. Many other Asian counties have had their 50th anniversary of independence from colonialism recently. Japan will soon reach its 50th year after the U.S. occupation. Japan was also occupied by the United States, which was one of the Great Powers in the world then. On the other hand, Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and other regions more than 50 years ago. I have found two major points of concern when I meet various people in various places of Asia in this phase of history.
One is that they are interested in studies of reviewing again the colonized modem era from various points of view. The other is that Asian people are eager to know how their counties were in the pre-colonized or pre-modern era. For example, in Singapore they are interested in reviewing their past to know the social, international, or regional relationships of Singapore before the colonial era. At the same time, they are very eager to understand the past relationships in the context current global or Asian movements. In that sense, a dialog with history means two types of dialogs between the present and the past. India marked the 50th anniversary of independence on August 15th last year. I found magazine and newspaper articles saying that independence itself was good, but what India has done in the last 50 years was to become the eighth most corrupt country in the world. They didn't mention which counties rank first to seventh. Indian people are very polite, so they didn't write hat Japan ranked first as I imagined. I'm not sure how they decided the ranking. By the way, I traveled from India and Southeast Asia to Turkey last year, too. In Turkey, completion cases involving politicians and businessman ware the biggest issue. Japan is no exception. Therefore, what we have done for these 50 years resulted in corruption of political and business circles, including Indonesia and other Asian nations. Corruption cases make newspaper headlines. I'm wondering what on earth his means. I'd like to refrain from calling it complain culture. I personally think that this phenomenon shows the 50 year old society after independence or WWII could not hold is social and political systems any longer. The systems have broken down and are not able to cope with new global movements, resulting in corruption. This is one of the problems that Asia is currently facing, I hope we will have two different kinds of reports today.
｡?Speaker: Anthony REIDO
Professor, Southeast Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University
Let me begin by thanking the organizers of this forum for including an Australian in this Asia community. We islanders have a way of being insular. I think islanders are always a little ambivalent about the vast continent which they have the good fortune to be close to without actually being a part of. And Australia has more than its share of ambivalence about is relationship with Asia.
But my belief is that our situation is not very different from Britain in its relationship with Europe. There is fundamentally nowhere else it can belong. It will gradually get over its inhibitions in this regard. Certainly I do take a view that anything which increases the diversity in the political construct of Asia, and reduces and discourages the tendency to interpret it in a biological, racial sense, is welcome.
Therefore I enthusiastically attach myself to it.
