China and Japan

Abstract

Chapter 1 explores how deeply connected, and in many ways similar, China and Japan are. Part of this involves their shared cultural roots, but a world historical perspective on Northeast Asia also shows how Japan and China have often followed similar trajectories, albeit sometimes at different times, in their attempts to come to terms with their regions, modernity, and the Western-dominated global power structure. Their similarity makes their mutual alienation something of a puzzle, not least because there are other, potentially more constructive ways of seeing the relationship between the two than that embodied in the history problem perspective. There are opportunities as well as problems in the shared histories of China and Japan. If the relationship between China and Japan is in some important ways defined by the narcissism of small differences, then the key to changing it is to change the historical perspectives that support such a view.