historical memory

Alan Gilbert has chosen to celebrate the close of his tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic on a political note, with a program called “A Concert for Unity.” BY inviting musicians from countries including Iran and Israel to join Philharmonic members on the stage on Thursday-Saturday, Mr. Gilbert is clearly trying to steer against the divisive winds coming out of Washington. But he is also interesting himself into a tradition of bridge-building musical events that reach back to the aftermath of World War II. Here are five memorable moments of musical diplomacy: 

Just a couple of weeks before the Belt and Road Forum, held in Beijing earlier this month, Sinica Podcast co-host Jeremy Goldkorn and I spoke with Joseph Nye, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, for our show. We talked about soft power, a term he coined and defined, and for which he’s perhaps best known — about China’s fixation with it, its prospects for augmenting it in the age of Trump, and the decidedly mixed results of its multibillion-dollar investments in soft power projects.

British chancellor Philip Hammond has called for closer economic ties with China as Britain enters a new post-Brexit era. As early as in 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jin-ping made his first state visit to the United Kingdom, which ushered a “golden age” to bilateral relations, the two great powers declared their consensus in working together with all Belt and Road project partners. [...] China and Britain need to use Xi’s proposed Belt and Road Initiative to raise awareness of the mutual benefits and overall exchanges of people to people of the two countries. 

Nowadays, one of the most historically charged rivalries on the international stage is that between Pakistan and India, and nowhere is it bigger than in the sport the countries are best at: cricket. India and Pakistan have been playing cricket against each other since 1952, and the game has become a metaphor of sorts for the countries’ relationship. In fact, the politics between the two nations and the games on the field are so intertwined that a phrase was coined: Cricket Diplomacy. 

Since the beginning of the year, Japan’s official relations with the Korean Peninsula have gone from bad to worse.With South Korea, the past continues to plague the bilateral relationship.[...] Only last month did Tokyo return the Japanese ambassador to Seoul after he was withdrawn in January to protest a comfort women statue in Busan. [...] Yet one option to repair relations with South Korea, and perhaps even make some headway with North Korea, seems obvious if you are in Kansai: Use Japan’s Korean community as an unofficial diplomatic channel of communication.

The long-lasting battle between Turkey and Armenia over the acceptance or denial of the Armenian genocide has gone to Hollywood, which has wheeled out two historic epics to offer competing perspectives on the World-War-I-era massacre. The Promise and The Ottoman Lieutenant are both panoramic love stories set in the chaotic twilight of the Ottoman Empire, but worlds apart.

The South Africa based Sylt Foundation and Myanmar online journal, Be Untexed, collaborated to lead the event which included an art exhibition, workshop and poetry reading. Han Lynn, the curator of the art festival and member of Be Untexed online journal said, “‘Violent Memories’ is the long-term project of the ‘Transformation and Identity, Trauma and Reconciliation’ which includes eight different countries.”

Next up is San Francisco, where this autumn another comfort women memorial will be erected. There, too, local politicians were subjected to hardball pressure tactics and an orchestrated campaign against the memorial that reflect badly on brand Japan. Shouldn’t public diplomacy work toward improving Japan’s image? In the history wars now being waged by Tokyo, this goal is being sacrificed on the altar of revisionism.

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