Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan

NY Times ^ | November 19, 2005 | NORIMITSU ONISHI

[neverdem]

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."

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...

[MattinNJ]

I should mention "House of Flying Daggers" from China. Visually stunning. I usually leave the subtitles because the voice overs are so bad but a friend recommended to leave them on so I could focus on the beauty of the movie. The first five minutes were painful-like bad kung fu movies. After that, I didn't even notice because it was such an incredible movie.

It was better than "Hero" although that was pretty good too.

[reagan_fanatic]

Heh heh .. good one! Here's another:

[Pyro7480]

Ping!

[Pyro7480]

My favorite scene of all time from Cowboy Bebop

[aug645]

None of this is really surprising at all knowing how deeply rooted Japan's long history of bias, animus and outright racism against its Asian neighbors is embedded into its culture.
Japan still worships the WWII kamikaze warriors at a Shinto shrine in Tokyo as national heroes. Japan has never come to grips with its criminal wartime past. Japan hardly makes
mention of Pearl Harbor in its school curriculum certainly never making genuine effort at reconciliation with its Asian WWII victims or offering a sincere national apology for its bestial WWII military occupation.

Even today Koreans and Chinese can not achieve full Japanese citizenship.

[aug645]

None of this is really surprising at all knowing how deeply rooted Japan's long history of bias, animus and outright racism against its Asian neighbors is embedded into its culture.
Japan still worships the WWII kamikaze warriors at a Shinto shrine in Tokyo as national heroes. Japan has never come to grips with its criminal wartime past.

Japan hardly makes mention of Pearl Harbor in its school curriculum certainly never making genuine effort at reconciliation with its Asian WWII victims or offering a sincere national apology for its bestial WWII military occupation.

Even today Koreans and Chinese can not achieve full Japanese citizenship.

[Sensei Ern]

In response, the spokesman for the Prime Minister of China said, "That comic is about the Taiwan province. Those guys are wierdos."

[Sensei Ern]

"Japanese don't like Chinese or South Koreans, South Koreans hate Japanese, Chinese hate South Koreans, Vietnamese, Vietnamese don't like Chinese. Everyone hates the Japanese."

Is that an updated Asian verson of TOm Lehrer's song, "National Brotherhood Week"?


Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule

/ E B7 / - E / E7 A / B7 EE7 /

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark
Are dancing cheek to cheek
It's fun to eulogize
The people you despise
As long as you don't let 'em in your school

/ A - / E - / B7 - / E E7 / A - / E - / B7 - EA EB7 EA EB7 /

Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks
All of my folks hate all of your folks
It's American as apple pie

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans
'Cause it's very chic
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can't stand
You can tolerate him if you try

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
It's National Everyone-Smile-At-
One-Another-hood Week
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you
It's only for a week, so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

[George W. Bush]

Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, not of the Yayoi from whom most modern Japanese are descended. In fact, Brace threw more fuel on the fire with: "Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi." The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace," I hope you are wrong."

That'll be explosive in racialist Japan. It offends so many cultural assumptions. The real problem for them is that, at some point, we'll be able to prove it in the lab.

[Sensei Ern]

Prejudism in Asia is not just a trait of Japan. In China, you are treated worse if you are from another province than if you were from the United States.

The prejudism goes so far as if you are from another city in the province, you are treated as inferior.

[Aquinasfan]

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.

Japan's weird, godless, materialistic culture can't be stable.

[Constantine XIII]

Eh, this seems like a blow below the belt to me. In a free society, American or Japanese, dumbasses have the right to speak their minds. (including NYT reporters)

Saying that racist manga reflects poorly on all Japanese is like saying Stormfront.org reflects poorly on all Americans. When a country has a population in the hundreds of millions, you can find several thousand who believe in anything.

[Constantine XIII]

LOL, great minds think alike. :)

[pganini]

BS. Chinese don't hate the S. Koreas, they hate the Japanese.

[pganini]

The problem is that the ruling party and its leaders still worships the war shrines. I mean, imagine if Germany chancellor went to a temple dedicated to worshipping Hitler.

[fnord]

thanks again ... I have 2 on the way for this weekend

[pganini]

DOes Storm front sells 300,000 copies of its book? That's fairly significant.

[pganini]

Japan is just bidding its time until the US withdraws from its "defense", then just watch the region explodes.

They have never acted like the Germans did after WWII.

[dangus]

""Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive." "

Umm... yeah? Fascism tends to do that. Oh, wait. There's "Crouching Drago, hidden tiger." *eye roll*

(And no, an eye roll has nothing to do with a "fascination" of "cannibalism.")