The (Im)Possibility of the "East Asian Community": Reflections on Nationalist Sentiments and the "Structures of Feeling" in East Asia

The recent development in East Asia has witnessed two contradicting trends: on the one hand, there have been reviving interests in Asianism (especially inspired by Takeuchi Yoshimi) and/or the so-called “East Asian Community” in both official and intellectual discourses; on the other hand, there has been an escalation of nationalistic politics in the region, manifested in such incidents as territorial disputes (between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, as well as between Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands) and the debates over the so-called “historical consciousness” and history textbooks. How can we make sense of such a seemingly paradoxical situation, and what are possible outcomes of this contradictory development? This paper is a modest attempt to explore the answers to the above questions from a sociological perspective. Drawing on the theoretical insights from British cultural critic Raymond Williams and German social thinker Max Scheler, this paper provides a preliminary examination of what can be called “structures of feeling” in East Asia. Three dimensions of these structures are outlined for analysis: (1) grief/victimhood and the politics of memory; (2) resentment (or ressentiment in Scheler's terms) and value systems; and (3) power relations and the multi-layered structures of ressentiment in East Asia. It is argued that the true reconciliation among different people in this region has to be reached before any ideal of Asianism or East Asian Community can be carried out. Towards the end of the paper, the implications for the reconciliation in the region will be further explored.