An excerpt from A Testament to the Japanese People by Shōichi Watanabe and Kōjin Kusaka, exposing the myth of Chinese diplomatic genius and explaining why proactive historical argumentation is essential in diplomacy.

2016-02-29

The following is taken from the dialogue collection A Testament to the Japanese People by Shōichi Watanabe and Kōjin Kusaka, published by Tokuma Shoten (1,300 yen).
I believe this is a book that every Japanese citizen should read.
It is no coincidence that the two authors chose the word “testament” for the title.

[Omitted preceding text. Emphasis in the body, except for the heading, is mine.]

Prime Minister Abe Has Transformed Japan’s “Weak-Kneed Diplomacy”

Kusaka

When it comes to issues of historical perception, it is not enough to carefully examine what the other side is saying.
We must move first and force the other side to examine our arguments.
China will inevitably find itself at a loss for words.
This is because what they say is nothing but castles in the air.

Because Japanese people have long loved reading works such as Records of the Grand Historian and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, many tend to believe that “the Chinese are geniuses at diplomacy,” but this is a major misconception.

On the contrary, China is clumsy at diplomacy.
After all, when we look at history, Chinese diplomacy has been a continuous series of failures.
If it had truly been skillful, China would not have had its territory and interests taken at will by the Western powers from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
This applies not only to diplomacy in peacetime, but also to foreign wars.

From the Opium War (beginning in 1840), the Sino-Japanese War (1894–), the Korean War (1950–), and the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979), China has never achieved its original objectives in war.
China has only prevailed when fighting ethnic minorities, such as in Tibet.

To be continued.