"There is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud

[Jack Bauer]

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/inter ... cs.html?hp

The New York Times

Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: November 19, 2005

TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."

In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."

In "Hating the Korean Wave," a young Japanese woman says, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!"
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The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.

They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.

Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.

Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.

"I wonder why they haven't grown up at all," Mr. Nishio said. "They don't change. I wonder why China and Korea haven't learned anything."

Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated. "Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Mr. Nishio said. "Economically, it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."

The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.

The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind "Hating the Korean Wave," began his strip on his own Web site then.

"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.

"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."

So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."

As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.

"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Mr. Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them."

The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.

"It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of major nations, not themselves," Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.

But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.

That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.

In 1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of a $100 bill) - wrote "Leaving Asia," the essay that many scholars believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan's subsequent invasion and colonization of Asian nations.

Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly backward.

Writing that "those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations," Fukuzawa said Japan should depart from Asia and "cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West." He wrote of Japan's Asian neighbors, "We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."

As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.

"The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy," said Mr. Nagayama.

Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.

The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."

The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.

The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 - which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.

"The only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food," said Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book. Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of their wartime atrocities in China. The book's main author and cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.

Like many in Taiwan who are virulently anti-China, Mr. Ko is fiercely pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in China early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books surged this year, to one million.

"I have to thank China, really," Mr. Ko said. "But I'm disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations."

--end--

As much as I am disappointed and alarmed at the blatant racism displayed by this piece of jingoistic tripe, I am frankly not all that surprised. The Japanese, to certain degrees, have always despised the mainland Asians as barbarians.

What DOES shock me is the blatant inferiority complexes demonstrated by these comic book writers (refer back to the bold print). As an Asian American, this type of complete cultural and ethnic self-loathing is utterly repulsive and insulting.

[Mr Bean]

Japan has always had a huge racism problem which it does not hide that well. Who they are racist aginst has changed over the years. At least they are not pretending they are more Russian than the Russians as they have had with the West for the past ten years.

[mr friendly guy]

But remember, Japan is truly trying to make amends. Its just ahem, a silent amends. Yeah thats right. Remember, we may have invaded their country, but it was to protect ourselves.

[Ford Prefect]

They're just botter because South Korea makes better movies than them.

[kheegster]

They are going to have to introduce fairly large-scale immigration over the next couple of decades to deal with their ageing demographic...I wouldn't be surprised if this is accompanied by an outburst of racist sentiment.

[Trogdor]

I would really like to know how that comic book figures that Japan made today's South Korea.

[Peregrin Toker]

I would really like to know how that comic book figures that Japan made today's South Korea.

Watch the scene in Conan The Barbarian where Thulsa Doom explains that he made Conan whom he is today.

[Gil Hamilton]

Wait... are you telling me that there are Japanese citizens who are huge bigots toward Koreans and the Chinese? I always thought they had a long history of love and hugs and sunshine between them!

[HemlockGrey]

The Koreas, China, and Japan hate each other. They have for the last 500 years. They will probably still be hating each other 100 years from now.

A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!"

Maybe the comic book artist ought to be reminded who, by that logic, built the Japan of today.

And hey, it ain't no Japanese guy who has a statue at Inchon.

[That NOS Guy]

And hey, it ain't no Japanese guy who has a statue at Inchon.

Isn't that statue protested, like daily?

Remember kids, we want to re-arm these people with offensive weaponry. What's the worst that could happen?

[HemlockGrey]

Isn't that statue protested, like daily?

True...by stupid people.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The one, and frankly massive, flaw with Japanese culture, aside from being batshit insane at times, is their inability to see the dark side of their history. From denying the rape of Nanking and forced prostitution of Chinese women, to horrific POW treatment, they're always giving a "Who, me?" impression on these things. The Germans accept and teach to this day about what the Nazis did in WWII. The Japanese use revisionism or simply omit their misdeeds and then go on to focus on the "atrocities" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the one thing I find forms bile in my mouth and I don't see it going away anytime soon.

The sooner they accept they have skeletons in their closet like every other nation and people on the planet, the sooner they can get off that high horse.

[SAMAS]

As much as I like many things that come out of Japan, I gotta say:

What do you expect from a place that at times paired saying "I was wrong" with ritual disembowelment?

[Exonerate]

Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.

Wow. Apparently "reform" means omitting atrocities committed by your countrymen. I wonder what the average Japanese person thinks of this - it's disturbing to think that they might not have learned their lesson after WW2, like the Germans did.

I'm of Chinese descent myself, and my immediate family has no problems with Japanese people. But one thing that pisses them off is that the Japanese government still hasn't made amends for Nanjing.

[CaptainChewbacca]

As much as I like many things that come out of Japan, I gotta say:

What do you expect from a place that at times paired saying "I was wrong" with ritual disembowelment?

That's perhaps the best explanation I've heard of Japan in a long time.

[Ypoknons]

China hates Korea? Naw, just look at all the Korean soap operas in the streets...

[wolveraptor]

Korean chicks are still hotter than Japanese ones.

[mr friendly guy]

But one thing that pisses them off is that the Japanese government still hasn't made amends for Nanjing.

But don't you know, they have. See all the foreign aid they give. It must be because of remorse. And they really are sorry. The remorse is just, um, silent. And look at China and North Korea. They are much worse.

Come on there are a few apologists for Japan's lack of remorse and lack of compensation to its victims. Come out, come out wherever you are.

[Lusankya]

As much as I like many things that come out of Japan, I gotta say:

What do you expect from a place that at times paired saying "I was wrong" with ritual disembowelment?

Well, it actually makes sense in a weird kind of way. Japan reached its population limit (food production-wise) hundreds of years ago, and neither China nor Korea would trade with them, so some method of selecting people to die would actually have been beneficial to them, because it would have reduced the strain on the surviving members of the population.

[AniThyng]

Am I the only one who sees irony in this dreck being written with plenty of KANJI?

Well, cynically, I can imagine there are quite a few people who would look to things like the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward and are otherwise eager to play up the menance of the PRC who would agree with this sort of Japanese nationalism. Not to mention the Taiwanese mentioned in that same article who seem to AGREE. Did Chinese/Taiwanese in Formosa somehow get of lightly in ww2 or something

Personally, except for this nonsense, what really irritates me is how chinese people are portrayed in anime and manga. For heaven's sake, I DO NOT wear traditional Chinese clothing even at the height of the lunar new year celebrations, much less every day

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

But don't you know, they have. See all the foreign aid they give. It must be because of remorse. And they really are sorry. The remorse is just, um, silent. And look at China and North Korea. They are much worse.

Come on there are a few apologists for Japan's lack of remorse and lack of compensation to its victims. Come out, come out wherever you are.

1) We can't come out in this kind of thread. We'd be sent to HoS and then Parting Shots before we know it, even relatively well-established members.
2) For myself, generally my argument for not providing compensation is that a) their governments apparently gave it up when they signed those treaties and b) the real victims are so old now that it will be useless to them and it just "fattens" the next generation (which I don't think is the purpose of compensation.) Had it been right after the war, or even the 1970s or 80s, I'd be right with those guys.
3) As for an apology, it is simply both good tactics and the right thing to do. And they do sometimes issue it, but I'd agree that they can put in more effort. If they are going to apologize anyway, let's go all the way...

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Am I the only one who sees irony in this dreck being written with plenty of KANJI?

No, you aren't.

Well, cynically, I can imagine there are quite a few people who would look to things like the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward and are otherwise eager to play up the menance of the PRC who would agree with this sort of Japanese nationalism. Not to mention the Taiwanese mentioned in that same article who seem to AGREE. Did Chinese/Taiwanese in Formosa somehow get of lightly in ww2 or something

Formosa was a Japanese colony at the time. On it are such bases as Takao and was the base of such units as the Tainan Kokutai. From what little is available on Wiki, they were actually relatively well off under Japanese rule, so that might have to do with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Jap ... onial_rule

[mr friendly guy]

2) For myself, generally my argument for not providing compensation is that a) their governments apparently gave it up when they signed those treaties and

The fact that Japanese courts do award compensation to Chinese victims from left over munitions would suggest that treaties regarding war compensation isn't quite as iron clad as you make out. Moreover IIRC failed in claims results the court saying they don't have enough power over Japanese actions in foreign nations, and NOT because it happpened a long time ago.

b) the real victims are so old now that it will be useless to them and it just "fattens" the next generation (which I don't think is the purpose of compensation.) Had it been right after the war, or even the 1970s or 80s, I'd be right with those guys.

And why should it matter that the victims are old? It sounds a variation of the "they are going to die anyway" arguments so its ok to screw them up. Are you seriously suggesting that if you knew you were going to die in a few years that winning the lottery would be "useless" to you.

Moreover what they do with their money ( lets say they decide to "fatten up" up their relatives) is their business. The question is whether they deserve to be compensated, not what they will do with the compensation money (which is a red herring).

[AniThyng]

Formosa was a Japanese colony at the time. On it are such bases as Takao and was the base of such units as the Tainan Kokutai. From what little is available on Wiki, they were actually relatively well off under Japanese rule, so that might have to do with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Jap ... onial_rule

I am aware that Taiwan was a Japanese colony, my using the name Formosa was deliberate

But then again, Korea was a Japanese colony as well - it's interesting that the level of resentment is so dramatically different. Taiwanese acceptance of Japanese pop culture is a stark example, to start...I also thought Hong Kong was also surprisingly lenient on the Japanese, until I heard of the anti-japan riots recently...

[PainRack]

I am aware that Taiwan was a Japanese colony, my using the name Formosa was deliberate

But then again, Korea was a Japanese colony as well - it's interesting that the level of resentment is so dramatically different. Taiwanese acceptance of Japanese pop culture is a stark example, to start...I also thought Hong Kong was also surprisingly lenient on the Japanese, until I heard of the anti-japan riots recently...

Taiwan doesn't resent Japan? Hello, this is the very same Taiwan that just a few months ago, had a minister threaten war with Japan over the issue of fishing rights.

What was it he said again? "Rather die in battle than be humiliated?" I remember all those news agencies in Taiwan pouncing on him and showing the comparison of the ROC navy and the JSDF navy, indicating how absurd his position was.

Just shows that stupid people exists everywhere.