Ping!
toyo1919: Thanks for the link to the critique of the NYT.
Although much has been said of Japanese xenophobia, I know that there is a strong self-critical movement also. In my own tastes of manga, I read a lot of Tezuka Osamu, which has a humanism parallel to the films of Kurosawa Akira. Nakazawa Keiji's "Hadashi no Gen" is very critical of Japanese militarism and imperialism. And mangaka Takahashi Rumiko's "Ranma" was openly Sino-philiac, yet quite popular in its day. No, as yet I've not visited Japan, but I believe there are some countervailing winds such as these.
OTOH, when I started to learn a little rudimentary Japanese, I was somewhat surprised to see that they had two separate alphabets for spelling "true Japanese" words and for spelling "foreign" words. That sort of bifurcation lends itself to a xenophobic mentality.