Tracy Quek from the U.S. Bureau at The Straits Times Singapore Newspaper discusses the "Divided Memories and Reconciliation Project," a three-year project to examine how the main players in North-east Asia - China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - along with the United States, form their views of the past, or what the scholars call "historical memories."

In April 2005, fierce anti-Japanese protests broke out in China.

Triggered in part by Japan's approval of newly revised history textbooks which glossed over the Japanese wartime abuses of six decades ago, the demonstrations were the most provocative upsurge of anti-Japanese unrest China had seen in years.

It was not the first time problems of the historical sort had sparked trouble between the neighbours in North-East Asia.

But researchers at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre hope that their work will damp down future outbursts and open a path to lasting reconciliation.

Led by director Gi-Wook Shin and co-director Daniel C. Sneider, researchers are completing an ambitious three-year project to examine how the main players in North-east Asia - China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - along with the United States, form their views of the past, or what the scholars call "historical memories."

Entitled Divided Memories and Reconciliation, the project began in 2007 and is divided into three phases. The first stage involves comparing how shared historical events are depicted in history textbooks of the five societies, as history education plays a crucial role in shaping citizens' perspectives on the past.

The second stage, which began last year, looks at the treatment of the 1931-1951 wartime period in the films of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the US.

In the third phase, researchers will survey elite opinion makers in China, Japan, South Korea and the US for their views on historical issues.

The study, said Mr Sneider, stems from the understanding that unresolved historical issues are drivers of regional tension, and continue to bedevil relations to this day.

"The past is very much part of the present. Unresolved problems of the past feed mistrust and suspicion," he told The Sunday Times. "History issues also feed rising nationalism that can undermine government efforts to repair damaged relations."

Despite growing economic and cultural ties, wounds inflicted in the time of war and colonialism still fuel anti-Japanese sentiment in China and South Korea. The outcome of China's civil war resonates today in tension between the mainland and Taiwan.

The goal was not to forge a common historical account for the region or reach a consensus on specific events, said Mr Sneider. He noted that such attempts by historians and government committees have had limited success.

Stanford University historian Peter Duus explained: "Writing a common history is not feasible politically because the teaching of history in East Asian countries is tied to building and strengthening national identity."

Instead, Stanford researchers felt it was more fruitful to "try to recognise and understand how each society has developed its own distinctive memory of the past, and how that has affected its national identity and relations with others", commented Prof Shin.

Prof Duus and Prof Shin were writing in separate chapters included in a soon-to-be-published edited volume on the textbook study. Parts of the book were seen by The Sunday Times.

To facilitate the textbook study, researchers translated into English the most widely circulated high school history textbooks used in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the U.S.

Focusing on the period from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war in 1931 until the formal end of the Pacific War with the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, the researchers selected eight historical issues for translation.

These included the Japanese capture and occupation of Nanjing, China in 1937 and the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945.

Researchers included the US in the textbook study because of its participation in the Pacific War, as well as its role in shaping post-war dynamics in the region.

Looking at the translated textbook excerpts side by side would allow people to compare how historical memory is shaped in the different school systems for the first time, said Mr. Sneider.

The team then brought together historians and textbook writers, including those from Japan and China, in a conference in February last year to analyse the treatment of history in thetextbooks, and their impact on regional relations.

The experts found that the region's history texts were far from objective.

"Textbooks have been written specifically to promote a sense of national identity, and the politics of nationalism invariably affects their writing," wrote Professor Shin.

Both Taiwan and mainland China textbooks, for example, play up the victory over colonialism and imperialism. But while "both agree the defeat of the Japanese army ended a century of humiliation and established China as an international power, the path to victory is described differently and so is the outcome," Professor Duus commented.

The deepest disagreements between the mainland and Taiwanese textbooks are about the nature and effectiveness of Chinese resistance to the Japanese. The Chinese texts played down the role of the Kuomintang, while the Taiwanese texts make scant mention of the Chinese Communist Party's guerilla bases.

Compared with the Taiwanese textbooks, the Chinese texts dwelled on the brutality of the Japanese military in more graphic detail.

American textbooks, in general, were better than the Asian textbooks at encouraging critical thought. "You have a debate over the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, or discussions of the events that led to Pearl Harbour, for example," Mr Sneider noted.

In contrast with Chinese and US textbooks, the tone in Japanese textbooks is "muted, neutral, bland", Prof Duus wrote. While they make no effort to conceal the brutality of Japanese forces towards occupied peoples, they do not give students much of an analytical construct to understand events, observed Mr. Sneider.

What the study made obvious was that the problem was not just with the Japanese historytextbooks, even though they have received most of the criticism. Experts point out that the textbooks which whitewashed wartime abuses are used in less than 2 per cent of Japanese schools.

"This is a problem for everybody," said Mr Sneider. "We are all participants in creating a divided, and to some degree, implicitly distorted understanding of the past."

The edited volume on the textbook study - which includes discussions from the February 2008 conference, and translated textbook excerpts - will be out next year. A teaching supplement based on the textbook study has been prepared for use by high school teachers in the US.

Mr Sneider said researchers hoped their work would show that "we need to take a dispassionate, comparative approach to history that recognises there is no single historical truth that everybody has to subscribe to".

He added: "There is room for discussion which can hopefully lead to reconciliation."

In December 2009, the Asia Health Policy Program celebrates the first anniversary of the launch of the AHPP working paper series on health and demographic change in the Asia-Pacific. The series showcases research by AHPP’s own affiliated faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars, as well as selected works by other scholars from the region.

To date AHPP has released eleven research papers in the series, by authors from China, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Pakistan, and the US, with more on the way from Japan and Vietnam. Topics range from “The Effect of Informal Caregiving on Labor Market Outcomes in South Korea” and “Comparing Public and Private Hospitals in China,” to “Pandemic Influenza and the Globalization of Public Health.”  The working papers are available at the Asia Health Policy website.

AHPP considers quality research papers from leading research universities and think tanks across the Asia-Pacific region for inclusion in the working paper series. If interested, please contact Karen Eggleston.

In 2009-2010, the Program on Human Rights will partner with FCE and DLCL to launch part 2 of the Contemporary History and the Future of Memory series by adding "Reconciliation" to the mission.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The "History, Memory, and Reconciliation" series will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  

Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam was published by Stanford University Press in November 2009. But the story behind the book dates back five years to November 2004. It was then that Donald K. Emmerson and Daniel M. Varisco agreed to disagree.

Emmerson spoke on "Islamism: What Is to Be Said and Done?" (video link and discussion) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC on 30 November 2009.

Varisco, a Hofstra University anthropologist with expertise on Islam and the Middle East, had invited Emmerson to join a panel on "Islam and Political Violence: The ‘Ismhouse' of Language" at the 2004 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association.

Emmerson was pleased to accept. Not since graduating from high school in Beirut had he lived in the Middle East. He had specialized instead on Indonesia, famously known as having more Muslims than any other country, yet spatially and spiritually peripheral to the Middle Eastern locations of Mecca, Medina, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Emmerson relished the chance to interact with experts whose knowledge of Muslim societies had been acquired mainly in Arab settings. He also shared Varisco's interest in discussing the controversial and contested meanings of the words "Islamism" and "Islamist." Since 9/11 these terms had become increasingly common in English-language discourse on Islam, Muslims, and violence by Muslims claiming to be acting in the name of their religion.

On the panel, before some two hundred MESA attendees, Varisco and Emmerson politely disagreed. Varisco argued that "Islamism" and "Islamist" were invidious terms that falsely linked Islam to terrorism. For the sake of consideration and accuracy, he said, they should not be used. Without advocating self-censorship, he defended his refusal to use "Islamism" or "Islamist" in his own writing and teaching.

"Inventing Islamism: The Violence of Rhetoric" is the title of Varisco's MESA paper as it appears in the book. "Why," he asks, "do we need a term that uniquely brands Muslims as terrorists rather than just calling them terrorists and militants, the way we could easily do for followers of any religion or any ideology? As scholars and students of religion, should we not be doing all we can to refute the notion that Islam is intrinsically more violent than other religions?" (Islamism, p. 33.)

Emmerson agreed with Varisco that the terms "Islamism" and "Islamist" were often used to conflate Islam, Muslims, and violence. But Emmerson argued that the words were not so uniformly and falsely invidious as to warrant their deletion. In his view, in addition to referencing radical views and acts, the terms usefully named a variety of mostly peaceful ways of expressing and advancing subjective interpretations of Islam in public life. Phrases such as "democratic Islamism" and "moderate Islamists," hr argued, were already fairly common in scholarship and the media. His chapter is entitled, accordingly, "Inclusive Islamism: The Utility of Diversity."

After the session at MESA, Varisco, Emmerson, and copanelist Richard C. Martin, an Islamic studies professor at Emory University, spoke of someday turning the discussion into a book. Busy with other projects, they postponed this one, but eventually took it up again as an experiment with an unusual format: As a neutral party, Martin (with the later addition of one of his graduate students, Abbas Barzegar) would edit the book, which would open with chapters by Emmerson and Varisco stating their views. Scholars of Islam from around the world would be invited to comment briefly on the dispute. More than a dozen experts in or from the Middle East, North Africa, North America, and Southeast Asia contributed remarks, which fill the middle of the book. Varisco and Emmerson end the volume with chapters that update and extend their respective arguments in response to each other's and the commentators' views.

An anonymous reviewer of the manuscript for Stanford University Press suggested that Islamism as a phenomenon was on the decline, implying that the relevance of Islamism would follow suit. In Emmerson's opinion, this may not happen soon. Juxtapositions of Islam, Muslims, and violence continue to occur in a range of Muslim-majority countries. At the same time, a great variety of Muslim leaders and organizations committed to peace, dialogue, and democracy continue to demonstrate the civility of Islam as they understand it. This rich spectrum of motives and associations will continue to challenge analysts around the world -- scholars, journalists, and policymakers alike.

Is Islam a religion of peace? War? Neither? Both? In the case of those Muslims who do carry out acts of violence or intolerance in the name of Islam, should their claims to have been motivated by religious imperatives be accepted as true, rejected as false, or bracketed as subjective? How considerate and how accurate is it to assert that any Muslim who engages in terrorism must not be a true Muslim? What is a "true Muslim"? By whose standards?

Is it appropriate to argue, with Emmerson, that to speak of "Islamic terrorism" wrongly and hurtfully implies that terrorism is intrinsic to Islam as a religion, whereas the notion of "Islamist terrorism" merely links such violence to one among many possible ways of interpreting Islam as an ideology? Or should these distinctions about words be ignored in favor of actions, including possible revisions of American policy, that can help to diminish the incidence of supposedly religious violence, whatever its actual nature may be?

In months and years to come, Muslims accused of having planned or committed violence against American targets will be judged in a series of civilian and military trials here in the United States. The defendants will likely include high-profile individuals such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, charged with plotting 9/11, and Nidal Malik Hassan, accused of the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood. Some of the accused may admit responsibility for acts of violence and portray what they did as required by Islam. Some may accuse the US government of waging war against Islam. Some may claim innocence, or attribute what they did to personal reasons unrelated to religion. Stimulated by these proceedings, commentators on the Internet, in the press, and on talk shows can be expected to debate "Islamic terrorism" versus "Islamophobia."

Quite apart from whether fresh acts of terror occur, interest in the questions that Islamism features seems, at least to Emmerson, unlikely to decrease.

Global health disparities were the topic of a special event November 11th co-sponsored by the Asia Health Policy Program of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for Health Policy / Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

Sir Michael Marmot, internationally renowned Principal Investigator of the Whitehall Studies of British civil servants (investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality), spoke about research on the social determinants of health and taking action to promote policy change. Pointing out the extreme disparities in life expectancy for peoples in different parts of the world – including the “haves” and “have-nots” within the high-income world – he presented an overview of “Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health” (http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/). That report was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) and released last year; Sir Marmot served as the Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

Criticizing those who justify initiatives in global health solely on economic grounds, Sir Marmot argued that addressing the social determinants of health is a matter of social justice.

He presented data and discussed the report’s three primary recommendations: 1. Improve daily living conditions; 2. Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources; and 3. Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action.
Stating that the World Health Assembly resolution on the social determinants of health was only meaningful as a first “baby step,” Marmot urged the audience to consider how research and policy advocacy can address the social determinants of health so that all individuals can lead flourishing lives.

Examples from Asia include

• the high risk of maternal mortality (1 in 8) in Afghanistan;
• the steep gradient in under-5 mortality in India (with the rate almost three times higher for the poorest quintile than for the wealthiest quintile);
• less than half of women in Bangladesh have a say in decision-making about their own health care;
• a large share of the world’s population living on less than US$2 a day reside in Asia;
• social protection systems like pensions are possible in lower and middle-income countries, with Thailand as an example;
• more can be done to address the millions impoverished by catastrophic health expenditures, such as in southeast Asia; and
• conflict-ridden areas and internally displaced people, such as in Pakistan and Myanmar, are among the most vulnerable.

He also responded to questions about the role of freedom and liberty in social development – contrasting India and China – and commented on the peculiar contours of the US health reform debate.

Professor Marmot closed by noting that, in exhorting everyone to strive for social justice and close the gaps in health inequalities all too apparent in our 21st century world, he hoped he was not too much like Don Quixote, going around “doing good deeds but with people all laughing at him.” 
Professor Sir Michael Marmot MBBS, MPH, PhD, FRCP, FFPHM, FMedSci, is Director of the International Institute for Society and Health and MRC Research Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College, London. In 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to Epidemiology and understanding health inequalities.