TSUSHIMA, Japan — Over the centuries, this mountainous island in the strait separating Japan and Korea has seen some of the most violent episodes between those ancient Asian rivals, serving as a hide-out for pirates, a forward base for invaders
TSUSHIMA, Japan — Over the centuries, this mountainous island in the strait separating Japan and Korea has seen some of the most violent episodes between those ancient Asian rivals, serving as a hide-out for pirates, a forward base for invaders and a desperate first line against attack. But in recent years that troubled history seemed hazily remote in Tsushima’s sleepy fishing hamlet of Kozuna, where villagers have gathered for generations in a tiny temple to pray before a statue of the Buddhist deity of compassion that is centuries old.
At least they did until October, when villagers discovered that someone had broken into the unguarded temple at night to steal the bronze statue, which is believed to have been made in Korea. Villagers breathed a sigh of relief in January, when it was safely recovered by the police in Daejeon, South Korea.
But then the case took an unexpected turn. A South Korean court prevented the statue’s repatriation on the grounds that it might have been stolen from Korea centuries ago by Japanese pirates. Outraged at what they called a baseless claim, the islanders retaliated by canceling a summer pageant that attracts South Korean tourists with a colorful re-enactment of a procession of Korean emissaries who visited the island during a rare era of peace.
The standoff over a single small statue (just a foot and a half high) offers a glimpse into how disagreements over history continue to divide Japan and South Korea, two nations that share more in common culturally than either would care to admit.
While minor, the spat exposes the feelings of resentment and anger that run through more prominent disputes in the wake of Japan’s brutal colonization of Korea in the 20th century. One of the controversies, over whether Korean and other women were coerced into providing sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II, flared again recently after the mayor of Osaka, Japan, suggested that the women had served a necessary role in providing relief for men who were risking their lives.Continue reading the main story
“It is amazing how some people can hold a grudge for so long, even centuries,” said Sekko Tanaka, the retired abbot of an ancient Zen temple that sits in the shadow of stone fortifications used by a Japanese warlord to invade the Korean Peninsula in the 16th century. “Now that the geopolitical situation is shifting, the former victims think its time for payback.”
Tsushima has been time and again caught up in that turbulent history. Known as Daemado in Korean, the long, thin island — slightly smaller in area than Cape Cod — lies 90 miles from Japan but just 30 miles from South Korea. Its 33,000 residents, most of them elderly, make their living off fishing, the lumber industry and, more recently, Korean tourists.
The island’s location has led some Korean leaders in the past to argue that it properly belongs to South Korea. But the current government in Seoul — which controls a separate chain of islets that Japan says belongs to it — does not make any official claim to Tsushima.
The islanders keenly feel Tsushima’s history as a steppingstone for military forays in both directions. On one windswept beach, local residents say they have gathered annually for most of the last seven centuries to commemorate a battle in which a small ba