Posted on 04/23/2005 4:23:34 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Chinese community in Japan fears violence
AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press
TOKYO - Duan Yuezhong has some advice for fellow Chinese citizens in Japan these days: Don't speak Chinese in public, avoid reading Chinese newspapers on the subway and always get along with Japanese colleagues.
Duan, one of some 460,000 Chinese living in Japan, has good reason to be jittery. Japanese nationalists have reacted to violent anti-Japan protests in China with their own sporadic but troubling attacks on Chinese establishments in Japan.
"I've heard of harassment before, but my friends have never had experiences this bad," said Duan, 47, who heads the Japan-China Exchange Research Institute. "It's scary. If the situation escalates, who knows what will happen next."
The troubles have magnified the focus on the Chinese community here, the second-largest immigrant group after Koreans, and comes as foreigners were already becoming scapegoats for the country's rising crime rate. While the percentage of crimes committed by foreigners is tiny, thefts and murders by foreigners get high-profile media coverage.
The anti-Japanese protests in China broke out following Tokyo's approval of a history textbook that critics say whitewashes Japanese atrocities in the 1930s and 40s. Both Japanese and Chinese officials have called for calm and moved to guard against violence.
In Japan, authorities have pledged to tighten security around Chinese establishments. The prestigious Keio University has convened special meetings on protecting the 244 Chinese exchange students it hosts, though it hasn't taken any major steps.
"If we made too big a deal out of the situation, we are afraid we might make the relationship between the Chinese students and students from other countries unnecessarily more awkward," said Atsuko Ishiguro, a Keio spokeswoman. "We decided it's best to stay calm and see how the situation develops."
Protesters have already thrown a bottle of flaming liquid at a Chinese bank, shot metal pellets through the door of a Chinese language school and splashed red paint on the Chinese ambassador's residence, along with 22 other recent anti-China incidents.
While no Chinese have been injured, Duan and others complain of lower-profile discrimination, such as Chinese being refused service at shops or neighborhood bullying of Chinese children.
And fears were high that rightwing extremists would exploit the tensions to intimidate foreigners. Nationalist groups marched through a Chinese and Korean immigrant neighborhood in Tokyo on Saturday to protest the violence in China.
"We want to explain to them that anti-Japanese activity won't be accepted," said Shuhei Nishimura of the nationalist Kokumin monthly newspaper, which is organizing the rally. "We want to convey the feelings of the Japanese people."
The Chinese community has deep roots in Japan - some 30,000 arrived on the island as a result of Japan's military conquest of China that is the historical background of the current dispute. The Chinese have an especially large presence in the Kansai region of western Japan and in Yokohama, home to a Chinatown that is crowded on the weekends with diners and tourists.
In Yokohama, where many Chinese settled after coming to Japan during Tokyo's occupation of their homeland in the 1930s and 40s, residents said they hoped the dispute would blow over quickly.
One shopkeeper who has lived in Japan for 63 years said she hadn't witnessed anyone getting hurt in anti-Chinese violence - and was hoping she wouldn't.
"If there is a problem, the two sides should talk it out. All people have their shortcomings, but you mustn't resort to violence," said the woman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of attracting unwanted attention to herself.
Tenko Sato, a 70-year-old Japanese man reading palms at a nearby table, said he hoped the Asian giants would quickly bridge their differences - starting with a frank apology from Tokyo that will satisfy Japan's neighbors.
"The Japanese government should apologize and compensate where it needs to. The Japanese government always seems to fudge it - so it's not odd that Chinese are angered," said Sato. "Instead of always carrying on about the war ... we should resolve this quickly."
Ping!
Blogged.
Thanks.
When I see the news feeds of the mindless mob on the march on the Chinese streets, and think about how little they understand about their own government and their own history, it's depressing.
Mao killed far more people than the Japanese killed (and that's counting all the people the Japanese killed, in all countries).
And Mao killed far far more Chinese than the Japanese ever killed.
And the government of Mao is still in power, while the Japanese militarists have long since been swept away.
How mindless is the mob on the march in China today? How stupid are the Chinese people?
As to the "scapegoats" business: The troubles have magnified the focus on the Chinese community here, the second-largest immigrant group after Koreans, and comes as foreigners were already becoming scapegoats for the country's rising crime rate. While the percentage of crimes committed by foreigners is tiny, thefts and murders by foreigners get high-profile media coverage, I call "bunk". Crime in the Chinese community is far higher than it should be.
And I happen to think that immigrants who come to steal and murder should get some press attention, and some reconsideration on the part of the government as to the desirability of such immigration from China, although that cannot be a complete cure since I believe that a good bit of the Chinese influx is via illegal immigration.
The Chinese goverment is the one that was exploiting and intimidating The protests in China could not have existed without govermental approval and coordination. The Chinese goverment was hoping to intimidate Japan with these protests. Perhaps they did not anticipate the backlash in Japan to their intimidation.
China has overplayed the "Japan-WW2" card.
That's a bit like saying "9/11 was just an incident, Americans themselves killed more americans during the Civil War".
The point is that the chinese are infuriated that the Japanese are ignoring one of the worst genocidal attocities (in terms of barbarism, not numbers) in history. Then again the Japanese do the same thing when it comes to their treatment of WW2 prisoners of war
There are fanatics in Japan too? I am shocked. SHOCKED.
Mao killed far more people than the Japanese killed (and that's counting all the people the Japanese killed, in all countries).You are missing a few points here:And Mao killed far far more Chinese than the Japanese ever killed.
And the government of Mao is still in power, while the Japanese militarists have long since been swept away.
How mindless is the mob on the march in China today? How stupid are the Chinese people?
---me
That's a bit like saying "9/11 was just an incident, Americans themselves killed more americans during the Civil War".
The point is that the chinese are infuriated that the Japanese are ignoring one of the worst genocidal attocities (in terms of barbarism, not numbers) in history. Then again the Japanese do the same thing when it comes to their treatment of WW2 prisoners of war.
---you
1. The Japanese militarists are gone. The Maoist killers are still in power.
2. The Chinese people didn't die in a "civil war", they were systematically slaughter by the tens of millions by a government that was solidifying its socialist power base.
3. The Japanese government has apologized for those WWII crimes, many times.
4. All those "infurated Chinese" are giving a pass to the biggest mass-murderer who ever lived, and his legacy government that is still ordering them around and treating them like chattel.
5. They are afraid to take on their own government, so they are "infurated" at the Japanese.
The reporter was fishing for a Japanese whose words he can approve of. After all, he is from U.S. MSM, a little more liberal than Asahi Shimbun of Japan. You should be able to read between the lines.:-)
Of course there are differences between my example and your example. There are also differences between Mao's attrocities, and the Japanese attocities. I imagine the problem the Chinese demonstrators have is that they really hate a foreign nation killing their own and then trying to cover that aspect of history up.
This is a laugh. Who in Tokyo is going to attack the Chinese? The businessmen, the OLs?
And the searing irony of this all is that there are so many Chinese criminals that come to Japan under the auspices of being a language student, etc. who get a short term visa, land in Japan, and then disappear into the dark matrix of Tokyo only to reemerge after they were caught committing some crime.
Every week it seemed like another Japanese family on the news was robbed of their life savings by knife-weilding Chinamen screaming "Kane!" "Kane!" (Money!)
This is pure B.S.
Mao did kill more people than the Japanese killed, but does that justified that the Chinese is in the wrong about protesting against the atrocities committed by the Japanese? The communist atrocities and the Japanese atrocities are separate things, so please do not unify the issues to one topic. This is like saying the Americans should be banned from having a 'mindless' demostration on one terrorist issue (perhaps against the Oklahoma bombing) because another (9/11) is a more serious attack on American soil. These two are completely independent. Regarding your view that Chinese people understand little about their own government and history, how do you come to that conclusion? Just because the Chinese are protesting against the japs and not their own? Have you lived in China or met any Chinese citizens? Or do you come up with the judgement by your own prejudice and sterotypical world views like the countless many others, in their own ignorant and narraw-minded ways?
NOW you are saying the US has NO right to condemn Al-Queda?
WW2 and the USAF bombed (atomic included) and killed millions of civilians. Using your logic, the US has no right to condemn the 911 or ant other atrocities
Since by our logic. Mao killed millions, and then the present Regime has No right to condemn Japanese atrocities
typo
by our logic= by your logic
Hiiragi, (a Japanese word, interestingly enough, for a type of tree (or a small fish that bears some resemblance to that tree)), the Japanese government responsible for that history is long gone.
The Chinese government responsible for Tiananmen, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution is still in power.
To protest long-ago events from a defunct Japanese government that were not as terrible as the murderous ways of the current Chinese regime seems to me to be just a bit forced.
This very year, many Chinese will be tortured and murdered at the hands of the Communist government in institutionalized, official acts. No Japanese officials from the long-gone Axis government will be in China brutalizing the Chinese people this year: such brutal acts will all be from the hands of the vile, bloody-handed CCP.
the word "xenophobic" should have been coined for the japanese.
they have degrees of not-belonging to the islands.
you said, "the Japanese Govt responsible for the war crimes are gone" (all hung actually)
That is true
What is disturbing is the present Govt still honoring these war criminals and trying to deny the atrocities by putting the blame on the victims
Shadows of the past?
If German Ministers starts honoring Hitler and the NAZI war criminals and then blame the Holocaust on the Victims,
THEN I CAN BET YOU ALL HELL BE BREAK LOOSE IN EUROPE
Of course, there are always some people who are de-senitised to the sufferings of others
I find the current suffering of the victims of the current totalitarian Chinese government far more troubling than the exercise of religious freedom of a few Japanese done under a democratic government in an open society, especially when this honoring of the war dead is only a minuscule fraction of Japanese religious practice.
China might bear in mind that removing a beam from one's own eye before noting a mote in another's might be an apposite observation.
welcome to FR...
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