Time & Perspective Quote by Joichi Ito

There’s a quiet self-indictment baked into Ito’s opening: “For some reason” is the tell. It’s the shrug that signals how easy it is for an educated, globally networked person to inherit a comforting storyline about East Asia - one where Japan and Korea are basically fine, and any friction is an old-news footnote. The line performs a common elite habit: treating geopolitical memory as background noise until it disrupts the present.

Ito’s phrasing also reveals a managerial instinct. “Bad history” is a soft-focus summary for colonization, war, forced labor, and the still-live disputes over apology, textbooks, and memorialization. Compressing that into two words doesn’t just save time; it keeps the speaker safely above the mess, as if the past is a regrettable software bug rather than a structure that still shapes politics. It’s the language of someone used to operating in international rooms where harmony is a professional asset.

Then comes the centering move: “extremists on both sides.” It’s a familiar symmetry that sounds reasonable, even calming, and that’s why it works. The subtext is: normal people agree, only radicals fight. But in Japan-Korea relations, what counts as “extreme” is often contested precisely because the mainstream is still negotiating what responsibility and recognition look like. Labeling both edges “unreasonable” can function less as insight than as an exit ramp from taking a position.

Contextually, this reads like a bridge-builder trying to keep dialogue possible - yet it also exposes how reconciliation talk can flatten power, history, and stakes into a PR-friendly middle.