Anti-Japanese hatred seems to be on the rise in China, because the neighbors look to mark a half-century because the normalization of diplomatic ties between Beijing and Tokyo subsequent month.
The public temper in China has turned in opposition to even small indicators of Japanese culture within the nation in latest weeks, from a lady carrying a kimono to conventions for followers of anime.
Anti-Japanese sentiment runs deep in China, the place an intensifying nationalism has additionally emerged as Beijing clashes with the Western alliance of which Japan is a member. Many resent the refusal of Japan’s authorities to apologize for conflict crimes throughout the Sino-Japanese wars and its leaders’ repeated visits to shrines commemorating Japanese conflict criminals.
Even some self-professed followers of Japanese culture, identified in China as “ACG,” an acronym for “anime, comic and games,” are sympathetic to the latest surge of resentment.
“Although personally, my own benefit as an ACG fan has been harmed, I still think some of the arguments make sense,” Xinyu Liu, a 23-year-old graduate scholar in Chengdu, advised NBC News, referring to the latest backlash that led to the cancellation of scores of Japanese cultural occasions across China.
“In the context where Japan has not yet apologized for its war of aggression against China… this kind of anti-Japanese sentiment that suddenly intensifies every few years is bound to exist for a long time,” he added.
‘You are Chinese’
The most up-to-date flashpoint was a viral video circulating on social media earlier this month that confirmed a younger girl being harassed for carrying a kimono in an space of town of Suzhou that hosts a variety of Japanese eating places and shops.
In footage uploaded onto China’s web, a younger girl was accosted by an unidentified man who claimed to be a police officer.
“You are Chinese,” a person in a blue shirt yells on the girl carrying a white kimono with pink cherry blossoms, saying he wouldn’t be talking to her on this method if she have been carrying Chinese conventional clothes.
He then seems to detain her on prices of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” — a blanket cost generally utilized in China to arrest dissidents and journalists.
A hashtag on the topic was seen a complete of 150 million instances on China’s microblogging web site Weibo.
NBC News has reached out to native authorities however obtained no response, and has been unable to independently confirm particulars of the incident.
It got here at a delicate time, shortly earlier than the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan’s introduced give up on the finish of World War II. While some on-line commenters expressed help for the girl and accused the person of overreacting, the incident additionally led to torrents of renewed anti-Japanese rhetoric on-line, the most recent signal of an intensifying nationalism in a rustic that’s more and more delicate to narratives that counter Beijing’s.
“[W]earing kimonos should not be banned in our society… but when someone wants to wear a kimono, I would advise them to be aware of their surroundings to avoid upsetting those around them,” Hu Xijin, a nationalist public commentator and former editor of state-backed tabloid The Global Times, wrote on Weibo earlier this month.
Nationalistic hatred additionally flared up final month after the invention of the worship of Japanese conflict criminals at a Chinese temple in Nanjing, a metropolis central to Chinese animosity towards Japan.
