[2008.05.17] Don’t mention the war 勿提战争

Asia.view
亚洲观察
Don’t mention the war
勿提战争

May 14th 2008
From Economist.com
2008年5月14日
摘自《经济学家》网站

What Hu Jintao’s trip to Japan really accomplished
胡锦涛访日的真正成果

THE success of Hu Jintao’s five-day trip to Japan, which ended last weekend, appears to have taken officials on both sides by surprise. It was the longest trip to a single country that Mr Hu has made while in office, and it is only the second time a Chinese head of state has visited Japan. Relations between the neighbours for much of the past two millennia have been marked by brief bursts of mutual admiration interspersed with lashings of trouble, strife and, on occasion, total war.
胡锦涛为时5天的访日之旅于上周末结束，其成功似乎让双方官员都颇感意外。这是胡锦涛上任以来在一国境内停留时间最长的出访，也是第二次有中国国家元首访问日本。两千年来，中日关系变幻不定，两国间有过短暂的互相钦慕，大量的纷争，也爆发过数次全面战争。

Admittedly, Mr Hu’s visit was more fluff than substance. China has now overtaken the United States as Japan’s biggest trading partner, but no new progress was made on the protection of Japanese intellectual-property rights in China, where much is pirated. Nor did China make a firm commitment to curb its carbon emissions or deal with worsening air and water pollution, all of which affect Japan.
应该承认，胡锦涛的访问更多地是一种姿态而缺乏实质性。目前，中国已替代美国，成为日本的第一大贸易伙伴。但是，境内盗版猖獗环境日益恶化的中国在保护日本知识产权的工作上并无新进展；在控制碳排放、治理大气污染和水污染等影响到日本的问题上也没做出坚定承诺。

Let a hundred meterological improbabilities bloom
破出万象新

Above all, Mr Hu and Japan’s prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, were supposed to have settled a potentially explosive dispute over maritime boundaries in the East China Sea. They had agreed in principle to jointly develop gas fields straddling the disputed boundary, but no deal was done.
人们普遍认为最重要的是，胡和福田已解决了可能引发争端的东海边界问题。双方仅在原则上同意共同开发有争议地区的天然气田，但没有就此达成任何协议。

Instead, two worn Chinese tropes—pandas and ping-pong—figured prominently and cloyingly. Implausible meteorological phenomena were also invoked: the countries’ relations had become an “everlasting warm spring”. This reversed a chill that descended a decade ago, when Mr Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, came to Japan in a hectoring mood, demanding a full written apology for its wartime past.
实际上，中国人乐此不疲的手法——熊猫攻势和乒乓外交，早已尽人皆知多则生厌。不敢恭维的气象术语也遭滥用：两国关系步入“持久的暖春”，逆转了十年来的寒冷。上一次寒冬降临在胡锦涛的前任期内，当时江泽民以威吓的姿态前往日本，要求其为战争历史做正式书面道歉。

And the big freeze came when Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006, began visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which honours not just Japan’s 2.5m war dead, but also executed war-criminals. Mr Koizumi offended Chinese sensibilities; about 10m Chinese died during Japan’s occupation of China between 1931 and 1945.
冰封期始自2001至2006年在任的日本前首相小泉纯一郎参拜东京靖国神社。靖国神社不仅供奉着日本的250万战争死难者，还供奉着被处决的战犯。小泉的行为伤害了中国人的感情。1931年至1945年，日本侵占中国的14年间有约1千万中国人死亡。

Just by hosting Mr Hu, said Japanese nationalist politicians and their sounding boards in the right-wing press, Mr Fukuda was selling out Japan (and Tibet). But most analysts in Tokyo, looking at the fluff, have not set much store by the visit. Mr Fukuda is a “friend of China” who stresses warm relations with Japan’s neighbours. He does not visit Yasukuni. So the mood music for the meeting with Mr Hu was always going to be warm, they say.
日本的民族主义政客及其右翼媒体鼓吹者认为，福田接待胡锦涛就是出卖日本（和西藏）。但是东京的大部 分分析人士都看到了此次访问中的做秀成分，对之并不报太大希望。福田是“亲中派”，他强调日本与邻国的关系友好，也不参拜靖国神社。所以他们说胡锦涛与福 田的会面将是春风和煦。

Effecting any lasting change in the two countries’ relations is another matter, analysts say. After all, Mr Fukuda’s standing at home, where he presides over a shambolic and talentless administration, is fragile. As if to prove the point, the China-Japan summit appears to have done nothing for Mr Fukuda’s approval ratings, which are plummeting. Colleagues say that the prime minister’s driving ambition is to remain in office for longer than his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, who lasted all of a year (Mr Fukuda is in his eighth month).
但分析 家们认为，此次访问能否给两国邦交带来深远影响尚属未知。毕竟福田自己还立身未稳，他手下的本届政府办事无能、乱成一团。本次中日首脑会面似乎没有对福田 正在直线下滑的支持率造成任何影响，这一现象恰好验证了这一观点。同僚们说首相的雄心和动力是让自己的在任时间超过前任，而安倍晋三做了一年的日本首相 （福田现在正处于其任期的第8个月）。

Still, it would be a mistake to ignore the one subtle but crucial achievement of Mr Hu’s visit. In dealing with the prickly matter of Japan’s brutal past, he has booted the ball of history into the long grass [1]. More clearly than any Chinese leader before him, Mr Hu said, in effect [2], that the harm Japan did in the first half of the 20th century was outweighed by its contribution to Asian peace and prosperity in the second half.
虽然如此，胡锦涛的访日成果还是微妙而关键的， 绝不可忽视。在如何面对日本残暴的过去这一棘手问题上，他选择了绝口不提。胡锦涛的态度比之前任何一位中国领导人都要明确。他实际上就是在说，日本在20 世纪后半叶为亚洲的稳定和繁荣作出的贡献已经大于它在前半叶所造成的伤害。

For a sense of how bold a move this is, you can turn to China’s internet chat-rooms, where young nationalists raised on an official pap of anti-Japan diatribes seem puzzled. As Tobias Harris, proprietor of an excellent Japanese politics blog called Observing Japan writes, China will soon follow Basil Fawlty’s [3] line when Germans come to stay at his hotel: “Don’t mention the war”.
如果不能理解迈出这一步是多么的大胆，就去中文网上聊天室看看吧。听着中国官方反日的一面之词长大的青年一代 民族主义者在那里发表着他们的困惑。正如优秀日本政治博客“日本观察”的作者托马斯·哈里斯所写，中国很快就要照着巴兹尔·法瓦蒂的台词做了，此君在德国 人入住自家旅馆的时候说：“别提战争。”

As for Mr Fukuda, history may judge him more kindly than his indifferent countrymen do today. For one thing, he recognised what China wants at a crucial juncture in its breakneck development: the assurance of stability and good relations in its Asian backyard. Mr Fukuda saw, in other words, that a China in search of legitimacy wants to be tied into regional structures and institutions, even if that crimps its room for manoeuvre.
历史对福田个人的评价可能会比今天他冷漠的同胞对他的 评价要高。他首先认清了中国想要的是什么——中国迅猛得有些危险的发展正处于关键时期，它需要与亚洲邻国建立稳定的关系，以确保不会后院起火。换言之，福 田认识到，中国正在寻求认同，它渴望参与到区域组织机构当中去，即使这样做会让它少了很多回旋的余地。

When it comes to serving Japan’s own interests, surely Mr Fukuda also deserves credit. Engagement is the only constructive approach to take towards Japan’s biggest economic partner. It is also (though even Japanese pragmatists will not say it out loud) the only feasible approach. Japan’s power is declining relative to China’s, and it is set on a relentlessly downward demographic course. Japan’s hawks are deluded if they think otherwise.
在维护日本本国利益方面，福田也同样值得信任。合作是与日本的第一大经济伙伴交往的唯一建设性方法，也是唯一可行的方法（虽然日本人，就算是务实派也不会说出来）。较之中国，日本的实力正在衰退，人口老龄化问题也在迫近。日本的鹰派如果此刻还心怀他念可就是自欺欺人了。

注释：
[1] booted the ball of history into the long grass：if an issue or problem is kicked/booted into the long grass, it is pushed aside and hidden in the hope that it will be forgotten or ignored. （usingenglish.com)
[2] in effect: You add in effect to a statement or opinion that is not precisely accurate, but which you feel is a reasonable description or summary of a particular situation.（Collins Dictionary）
[3] Basil Fawlty：巴兹尔·法瓦蒂，BBC制作的情景喜剧《非常大酒店》（Fawlty Towers）里的主人公。”Don’t mention the war”是他在《德国人》一集中的台词。此句多经引用，已经成为一个文化现象。（参考Wikipedia，详见链接）

译者：silmar http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewt … 1464&extra=page%3D1