Japan-China Relations: Past History and Future Directions

This international conference, organized by CAPI's former Japan Chair, Dr. Joseph Kess and China Chair Dr. Wu Guoguang, with Wenran Jiang of the University of Alberta, brought leading Chinese, Japanese and Canadian participants together for two days in March 2007.  The serious and forthright tone of the conference was established by contrasting reactions to a keynote lecture the first morning of the conference on the controversial role of apologies in East Asian affairs by Michael Donnelly, the Dr. David Chu Professor Emeritus of Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Toronto.  These exchanges provided a salutary reminder of the role that recrimination and apology over events dating from the conflicts of the first half of the last century still play in the internal politics of both nations, as well as in bilateral relations.  To this intensive conversation about relations between Japan and China was added a further dimension, as the conference examined Canada's dealings with the economic and political powerhouses of East Asia, a topic taken up in the final banquet speech by Joseph Caron, recently Canadian Ambassador to China and now serving in the same capacity in Japan, who reminded his audience of the great cultural differences between Japan and China, and the need that foreigners have to be sensitive to these in dealing with both countries.  The Conference was preceeded with a Lansdowne Lecture on March 2 on the topic of: "Sino-Japanese Cultural Relations: The Long View", delivered by Joshua Fogel, the Canada Research Chair in the History of Modern China at York University.  Other presenters at this international conference included:

• Robert Bedeski, Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria
• Akiko Fukushima, Japan Foundation
• Carin Holroyd, Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada
• Satoshi Ikeda, University of Alberta
• Wenran Jiang, China Institute, University of Alberta
• Jin Xide, Institite of Japanese Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
• Heita Kawakatsu, National Institute of Research Advancement
• Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun and a member of the Japan-Canada Forum
• Ambassador Peter Yoshihasu Sato, former Ambassador to the People's Republic of China and Co-Chair of the Japan-Canada Forum
• Shi Yinhong, Renmin University, Beijing
• Zhu Feng, Peking University