EDITORIAL: Time for diplomacy to step in
The Japan Times: Aug. 11, 2004
The recent Asian Cup soccer tournament, which Japan's national team won, witnessed an eruption of anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese fans, including booing during the playing of the Japanese national anthem. The Chinese government tightened security for Saturday's final in Beijing, but anti-Japanese sentiment manifested itself after the game in the burning of a Hinomaru flag and an attack on a Japanese diplomat's car.
Contests between country-based teams are nationalistic events by nature. One can understand, therefore, the possibility of fans of any nation becoming boisterous. However, bringing specific political issues into games and bashing a country over them, as was done during the Asian Cup, is abnormal to say the least.
The troublesome behavior of some Chinese soccer fans, which continued despite repeated warnings by the authorities, has left China with a serious headache as it prepares to host the 2008 Olympics. According to one Chinese Olympic Committee official, the brouhaha demonstrated a "low cultural level."
Be that as it may, one must ask why anti-Japanese sentiment is so strong among the Chinese. We must calmly reflect on the roots of the mutual dislike between the two nations. It is necessary for countries from time to time to check the image they reflect in the "mirrors" of other nations.
Anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese has deep roots. Incidents such as the deaths and injuries caused last year in China by abandoned Japanese chemical weapons or the hiring of hundreds of Chinese prostitutes by a Japanese tour group quickly stirred up anti-Japanese vitriol on the Internet. Japanese commentators have suggested a number of reasons for the sentiment at the Asian Cup, including anti-Japanese "patriotic education" in China and the projection on Japan of pent-up feelings of dissatisfaction with China's economic disparities or with the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Few commentators, however, have touched on Japan's own responsibility for the anti-Japanese sentiment. In the second half of the 1990s, when China's market economy got on track and the country set off on the road to becoming an economic power, anti-Chinese sentiment began to grow in Japan. As people began calling China the "world's factory" and a "huge market," many Japanese, enduring troubled economic times, began to view China as a threat.
This sentiment, combined with a widely held feeling that Japan was superior to a country that was ruled by a communist dictatorship and had little apparent respect for human rights, created a perverted "we hate China" attitude. Books about the "Chinese threat" were conspicuously displayed in bookstores, and magazines appeared that used slogans dating back to the Sino-Japanese War. Such opinions, of course, were not those of the Japanese people as a whole. But many Chinese apparently looked into the mirror that was Japan and saw only anti-China attitudes.
In reality, however, expanding demand from China has provided the driving force behind Japan's economic recovery, and economic relations between the two countries have been and continue to be mutually beneficial.
Concerning Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a lightning rod for criticism in China, Tokai University historian Mr. Tamio Kawakami chided the premier, saying: "Mr. Koizumi said he did not mind criticism from neighboring countries. If a German chancellor made that kind of statement, he would be banished from the European Union immediately." Regarding the troubles at the Asian Cup, Mr. Kawakami said, "Young Japanese do not know of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in Chongqing and Jinan. I suspect the media have not told these stories."
For Beijing, economic growth is an imperative. Yen loans from Japan are the foundation of economic growth, so China must continue to build stable economic ties with Japan. In the eyes of many Japanese, however, the Chinese appear obsessed with a sense of victimization rooted in their prewar and wartime experience. And browbeating tends to come to the fore in China's dealings with Japan.
Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Sino-Japanese War. The only way for East Asia's leading powers to coexist is for both to take a hard look at the images they reflect in each other's mirror and then strive to discover their common interests. To this end, a resumption of exchanges between the leaders of Japan and China, which has been suspended, is essential. Mr. Koizumi cannot duck the issue. It is time for diplomacy to step in.
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