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The year 2014 witnessed an international episode which sharply demonstrated both the degree to which modern history is politicized in East Asia and the extent of disagreement between the nationalized historical memories of different East Asian states. When a memorial dedicated to An Chunggün (1879-1910), the nemesis of Itö Hirobumi (1841-1909)-the hero of Japan's modernization widely perceived as the arch-villain beyond Korea's colonization-was unveiled near Harbin Train Station, the site of the fateful shot in 1909, Japan's political leadership showed little willingness to share in the interpretation of history to which its Asian neighbours emphatically subscribed. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga defined An Chunggün as a "terrorist who received a death sentence" and added that "the coordinated move by China and South Korea based on a one-sided view [of history] is not conducive to building peace and stability." One thing he seemingly understood in the right way was the fact that the move was indeed highly coordinated, and on the highest possible level: the decision to erect the memorial was taken during a summit between South Korea's President Park Geun-hye (Pak Künhye) and China's President Xi Jinping in 2013.1 The episode made it clear that, far from being able to produce anything close to a commonly agreed account of their shared modern past, East Asian states lack even common terminology to discuss it: An Chunggün, a personality almost sanctified in the Korean accounts and deeply respected by modern Chinese, remains a "terrorist" for Japan's conservative politicians.
Of course, the history disputes between former colonizers and their ex-colonies are hardly a novelty. While colonialism has been almost universally denounced since the 1960s-one may refer, for example, to UN General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) on granting independence to colonial countries and peoples (I960)2 as an evidence for this-a common consensus on colonial history still remains an elusive dream. Not only in Japan, but also in many other former colonizing powers, the conservative mainstream still tends to honour the architects of the colonial empires rather than the challengers to the norms of the colonial order. One well-known example is the United Kingdom: the image of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), the very embodiment of the British Empire, continues to stand in Oxford despite the loud protests by students, many of...