Japan Korea and China Different or Similar

Asian Studies

Countries are very much representative of human nature. If you were to examine a microcosm of a nation at its basic level, it would be a local community or neighborhood. The people who live in the same community usually tend to share similar economic levels and cultural attitudes. Neighbors also influence the behaviors of each other. For example, affluent neighborhoods tend to have good school systems, active kids (as in after school programs), and involved parents. To a certain degree, these things are expected. This notion is applicable to the nations of China, Korea, and Japan. This paper will examine similarities and differences between these counties in a historical context. China and Japan were traditional societies that responded differently to the external stimuli of foreign relations. Korea is also similar in this regard but their foreign invaders were Japanese not Western imperialists. All three nations also suffered under oppressive regimes after the collapse of their traditional hierarchies. Finally, this paper will examine the different levels of discrimination faced by East Asians in the United States.

Korea and Japan share a lot of modern history due to the prolonged Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910-1945. During this occupation, the Japanese wanted to create a colony that was an extension of Japan in almost every way. The New York Times recorded the Japanese effort of the "complete Japanizing of the people of Korea" (Hedges, p.12). In the article, Hedges asks General Minami when will the Korean people be fully apart of Japanese society, the General responds, by saying that the transformation of the Korean people into Japanese citizens will take approximately thirty years (Hedges, p.12). The Japanese leadership wanted to indoctrinate the Korean people. Korea was a strategic location during World War II and the population needed to be completely pacified. Through the years of occupation, Japanese culture definitely had an influence on Korea. One of the few benefits of Japanese occupation was the modernization of Korean industries. Much like Japan after their transformation from the Tokugawa government to the Meiji government, Korea after Japanese occupation did not experience the political freedoms associated with a modern society.

Koreans did not enjoy a democratic government after Japanese occupation. North Korea, like China, became communist, while South Korea was under the rule of several dictatorships that had the backing of the United States. North Korea and China share a similar history. The leaders of the communist revolutions in both China and Korea fought against the Japanese and received support from the Soviet Union. However, during the Cold War, China and North Korea practiced a different style of communism. Bryan Cummings (p.3) comments how China influenced North Korea's style of communism and both incorporated Confucian philosophies. Mao, leader of the Chinese communists, and Kim Il Sung the leader of the Korean Communist both implemented totalitarian governments that refocused their governments ideology towards nationalism and self-reliance, conflicting with Soviet Union's Stalinist philosophy. These countries to this day share close ties, China being North Korea's principal ally. Their shared history would not have been true today if it was not for the Japanese.

The Japanese people also lived under an oppressive regime, the military regime during World War II. The military government's rise to power was a result of Japanese borders opening after years of isolation. The Tokugawa government ruled Japan until Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Japanese to commence trade with the outside world. Japan was in shock how far behind they were technologically, as a result the Tokugawa government was overthrown and Japan entered the Meiji Restoration, leading Japan out of a feudal system and into a modern bureaucratic government. China went through similar circumstances. China was a traditional imperial society until the influx of Westerners and opening its borders to trade. China treated Westerners as barbarians and saw itself as the center of the world, this changed after the Opium War. China signed the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 granting special rights to certain Western nations, but "As treaties multiplied over the years, China found itself caught in an intricate and ever-growing web" (Thomson, Stanley, Perry, p.37). The imperial Qing government lost control and eventually lost the country, ushering in a tumultuous time in China's history. The Chinese failed to create a unifying government like the Japanese that would lead them through a period of rapid modernization.

Another shared link between these nations is the discrimination faced by their immigrants in America. Chinese immigrants came to the United States in the 1850s to work the gold fields of California (Yu, p.6). They faced immediate discrimination because they were marked as exotic and alien. The competition they poised to white laborers sparked anti-Chinese violence. Racism was so pervasive that beginning in 1870, anti-miscegenation laws made it against the law for Asians to marry whites in the majority of western states (Yu, p.6). These discriminatory laws are based on the attitude that Asians brought their particular culture rather than traditions and ideas based in the Greco-Roman world (Takaki, p.13). Asians were further persecuted by institutionalized racism of public policies. The National Origins Act of 1924 forbade Japanese immigration while excluding immigrants from Western Europe (Takaki, p.14). These anti-Asian legislations affected all Asian communities including Koreans. Japanese-Americans, in particular, suffered during World War II. Over 120,000 were placed in internment camps, despite the fact that two-thirds were American citizens by birth (Yu, p.18). The Korean community did not experience targeted racism as the Chinese and Japanese communities. They were mistaken for Japanese or Chinese but there was no legislation enacted to specifically target the Korean community. They faced the same general level of discrimination as the other Asian communities.