These days, one doesn’t have to look too far to find real-world examples of William Faulkner’s famous line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Indeed, the ghosts of history are very much alive in recent tensions between China and Japan, sparked by an off-the-cuff comment by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae earlier this month that a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan by force would threaten Japan’s survival and thus could necessitate military intervention.
Beijing has responded with a diplomatic and economic pressure campaign, writing strongly worded letters to the United Nations, banning Japanese seafood imports and telling citizens to avoid traveling to its island neighbor, among other measures. The situation has blown up into what experts are now calling the most serious crisis in a decade between Asia’s top two economies.
