Don't mention the War 别谈到日本

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is a considerable amount of unresolved tension between Japan and China. Anyone who has visited chinaSMACK can testify to the vitriol that a minority of Chinese netizens can spew regarding anything Japanese. Under the anonymity of the internet, many people feel able to speak more loosely. However, 反日 (fanri, or anti-Japan) is an accepted and unchallenged topic of conversation. Last year, I stayed with a perfectly hospitable, friendly and normal family over the Summer holidays, but even on the first day, the daughter said to me offhandedly and casually that she hates the Japanese. My current landlord told me he would never rent any property of his to a Japanese. Recently, I had a disagreement with a teacher, let's call him Mr. Zhang, that really appalled me. 

I hadn't prepared all of the text, so I thought I could delay him a little, and seeing as he was looking at the map of China on the wall, I asked why China laid claim to the entire ocean below it right up to the shores of Malaysia. He somehow moved the topic onto the Japanese and spent the next hour ranting. And not the regular 'I don't like the Japanese' rants. He said he would never teach a Japanese person, because 'I teach students, not pigs or dogs', which he said in both English and Chinese. At first we treated it like a normal lesson. We've had other classes with other teachers where we've had discussions on the Diaoyu Islands that were perfectly reasonable, so we offered up other points of view, but remained neutral over the issue. Every time we tried to debate a point he would shout us down saying we were '没有道理' (being unreasonable or illogical), or deceived by the Japanese (through our university education!!), or that we didn't understand China. Another student eventually walked out, while I sat in silence. 

The next day, we went to the office and asked to switch teachers, not because he disliked the Japanese, but because as a teacher wasn't able to distance himself from the topic. He had upset too many of us to able to continue learning comfortably from him. We were then visited by the head of department and another teacher, who tried to convince us 

1. We didn't understand what he was saying
2. We misinterpreted what he was saying
3. It was our fault, for raising the topic of the Diaoyu Islands and for not understanding Mr. Zhang's temperament. 
4. Mr. Zhang can't be racist because the majority of people think this way

Firstly, I understood quite clearly what he was saying, especially as he repeated himself and he stood up to write words like 'deceptive' on the board. Secondly, calling people 'dogs' or 'pigs' is a common insult in China, and in those cases it is metaphorical (I hope), but saying 'I teach students, not pigs or dogs' denotes that this was not a metaphor. I would concede the third point had I actually raised the topic of the Diaoyu Islands. I'm not even going to go into the fourth point. AAARRRGHH. 

At this point, I feel the need to defend myself, as I understand that many Chinese have lasting personal reasons to feel embittered towards the Japanese. My mother's family were also directly affected by the Imperial Japanese expansion during the Second World War and before. Chinese resentment toward the Japanese mainly springs from their actions during this era. But personal grievance and violent Nationalism shouldn't have to be linked.

James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World, sees Chinese Nationalism as a child of the CCP that it is no longer able to control. From the mid-1990s the Chinese government altered its education system to what the Japanese see as an instigation of “drives to drum up patriotism”, reinforcing Japan as the enemy. As a result the anti-Japanese riots of 2005 became more than the government could control. They were unable to stop the crowds attacking Japanese property and embassies for fear that they would face a backlash for being pro-Japanese, which immediately equates to anti-Chinese. Consequently, the people of Japan saw “images of [Chinese] policemen standing by while demonstrators hurled stones at Japanese diplomatic offices”.

This is very much a shadow of what the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls the History Issue, which the media and education on both sides does not appear to be soothing. Chinese sentiment revolves around the lack of war reparations, a lack of a sufficient apology and Japanese aggression, especially over incidents like Nanjing. A CCP writer acknowledged that Japanese aid, grants and loans are “virtually non-existent” in China’s media, and newspapers deliberately tap into anti-Japanese feelings in order to improve their sales. The effects of the education which hones in on the Japanese atrocities of war has bred a youth which when asked what they associate with Japan, 83.9% respond “the Nanking Massacre”. Faced with such strong feelings from what is dubbed ‘the restless youth’, would the CCP leadership be allowed to back down in a crisis with Japan? Would it be pressured to continue by the will of the almost dangerously patriotic nation that it had a hand in making?

Likewise, the Japanese education system has been accused of neglecting or distorting the events of World War II, a cause of much aggravation in South Korea and China. Tokyo maintains that there was only textbook in question, and it was created by an independent publisher, and was only picked up by 0.1% of Japanese middle schools. In response to the outrage in China and South Korea, joint historical research groups were proposed, but the damage from the textbooks was already too deep. The textbooks combined with Prime Minister Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits sparked anti-Japanese demonstrations and hackers on the Prime Ministers site.

China saw Japan as glorifying its Second World War acts. Whether or not this is true, there is simply not the emphasis on the atrocities committed as there is in China, or South Korea, and as such some Japanese do not have the same understanding of events. Hence, Japan is frustrated by Chinese references to the past. The Chinese calls for an apology causes dismay in Tokyo, when they feel that they have apologised explicitly and repeatedly from 1972; “in the Japan-China joint communiqué of September 1972, in the 1978 treaty, and in the Japan-China joint declaration of 1998” and in numerous political speeches. However, after some such apologies, visits would be made to the Yasukuni shrine, where a number of Class A war criminal's names are listed. In visiting the shrine, it is felt that the Japanese honour the atrocities committed and their apologies are thus invalidated.

Such a gulf of misunderstanding between these two populations, perpetuated by their narratives of history and constant media portrayal of one another, takes a long time to heal. In the case of Mr. Zhang, Japan is difficult topic for him, one which time has not changed, a Chinese friend used the word 老顽固 (old and stubborn) to describe him. Understandably, this topic is particularly sensitive for the older generations, the ones who experienced occupation first-hand. So when Mr. Zhang said that we didn't understand China, he had a point. There is a difference between studying China's history in a formal, detached setting, from understanding the pain of humiliation, invasion and occupation. This pain and anger lives on in China's restless youth. 

I titled this post after the famous quotation from Fawlty Towers, but I mean it sincerely and with sadness, because unlike in Europe, the War is not forgiven, and is an ongoing issue in the form of the Diaoyu Islands. Raise the topic of the Japanese and the War, and you may find a can of worms that might be best left closed. Having said that, China is such a vast and populous country; among its citizens are those who are pertinacious in their prejudice, and on the other end of the spectrum, those who enjoy Japanese music, language and popular culture.