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This study focuses on Chinese football fans' reactions to the Japanese national team and their fans' behaviour during the World Cup 2022. Despite the historical and contemporary problems that make friendly relations with Japan difficult to achieve, football fans in China largely welcomed the good performance of the Japanese national team. This attitude may be described as 'thin cosmopolitanism' because Chinese fans' major frame of reference was still nationalistic. For them, the impressive performance of the Japanese national team means that Asians and the 'yellow race people' can also play good football. However, the Japanese fans, whose cleaning up of stadia received wide coverage during the World Cup, were criticized by the Chinese fans who interpreted the Japanese fans' action as reinforcing the existing global racial order. The findings of this paper help reveal the limits regarding football's role in contributing to a more cosmopolitan worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars tend to overlook the overseas Chinese press as a communicative tool for Chinese nationalism. This paper takes media history as its focal point to demonstrate the contextual influences that shaped the operations of Chinese print media and gave rise to the manifestation of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) identity in Japan. In particular, it emphasises that the mobilisation of the modern Chinese nationalism movement of the time was not the sole determinant of Chinese identity. It was also influenced by the way in which Chinese ethnic boundaries came to be shaped and reshaped in different historical periods through the dynamics between overseas Chinese communities and Japanese society. I use two overseas Chinese publications from different periods to illustrate the impacts of modern Chinese nationalism and the changing social and political context of Japan on the Chinese press. Finally, I present a synthetic narrative to account for the history of the overseas Chinese press in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Liang Qichao viewed the Italian Risorgimento, with the focus on his reflections on its meanings in the historical contexts of Chinese politics and tradition. It will identify and analyze the many forces and ideas that influenced Liang as he formulated his reflections, especially the timing around the turn of the twentieth century and the discourses of nascent nationalism in Japan where Liang lived in exile. The way Liang created - or recreated - the Italian story demonstrated that the Chinese had finally begun to realize a crucial point about the building of a modern nation. While Britain, the United States, and France were able to build a modern nation by starting from the grass roots and more closely observing Enlightenment ideals, China did not have the luxury or the time to follow the same path. In the age of high imperialism, the weak would simply be weeded out quickly. Without national salvation, there could be no modern nation. National salvation, as exemplified by the Risorgimento, involved maintaining and glorifying the country's own traditions and core values, which would in turn unify different social segments. Liang and his fellow reformers realized the importance of having simultaneously a national cause, a single political party, and a single leader, instead of having to take separate steps toward awakening. Liang's awakening paved the way for the unfolding of the great Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century, led first by the Kuomintang and then by the Communists. Following Liang's track of thinking, they both strived to build - or rebuild - a political centralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reinterpretation of Japan's responses toward China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue. It is generally taken for granted that Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the issue are determined by the personality of individual leaders, the emergence of Japanese conservative nationalism and the calculations of Japan's national interests with regard to China's strategic role. With the examination of two cases during the Koizumi and Abe administrations between 2001 and 2007, this paper offers an alternative interpretation by highlighting the rationality of individual political actors and the primacy of domestic political survival. The article suggests domestic political legitimacy of individual leaders is a vital factor that affects Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise of consumer nationalism in China through an in-depth analysis of two recent controversial Japanese ad campaigns. I situate the analysis in the sociopolitical and cultural contexts of contemporary China. I argue that Japanese producers shoulder a particular burden of history as expressed in consumer nationalism, which is a combination of the production and reproduction of Japanese imperial history, the construction of Chinese identity, the expression of dissatisfaction toward the Chinese government and consumerist ethos in the context of globalization. The Internet has become a crucial space that organizes Chinese consumer nationalism and enables consumers to feel a sense of empowerment when they express complaints with the controversial ads. Consumer nationalism in China can also be understood as what Benedict Anderson (1991) calls an “imagined community” that attempts to unite the Chinese in a problematic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, against the backdrop of multiple anti-Japanese protests in China, the rise of Chinese nationalism has been much debated. By taking the 2010 and 2012 Sino–Japanese crises over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands as a case study, the article applies discourse analysis to media articles and interviews to ascertain the Chinese government's propaganda toolbox in shaping the nationalist discourse, as well as to substantiate the defining features of anti-Japanese nationalism. The findings reveal a combination of strategies and techniques that the propaganda apparatus uses, such as the creation of an 'us-versus-them' dichotomy, galvanised inclusiveness, censorship, and 'card-stacking' to mould nationalism. The article substantiates empirically both top-down and bottom-up strains of nationalism, and their interaction through the four key themes of sovereignty, history, mistrust and reactivity. It finds that Japan bridges these strands of Chinese nationalism, but in its absence alternative views of nationalism are articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia is narrated in Japanese foreign policy pronouncements as an opportunity as well as a threat. Despite the purported transformation from militarism to pacifism since August 1945, the reified images of Asia as an ‘entity out there’ remain resilient. The image of a dangerous Asia prompted Japan to engage in its programme of colonialism before the War and compels policy makers to address territorial disputes with Asian neighbours today. Simultaneously, Asia persistently symbolises an opportunity for Tokyo to exploit. Hence, despite the psychological rupture of August 1945, reified Asia remains a reality in Japanese foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the Japanese occupation of North China at the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the Nationalist government adopted the strategy of using the regular army to develop the battlefield to the rear of the enemy in order to sustain a protracted war. As a result, the Northwestern Army, which was organizing anti-Japanese forces in North China, became the Nationalist government's main military force in the occupied area. However, caught between Japanese and Communist troops, the Northwestern Army surrendered to the Japanese for the purpose of self-preservation and thus became a puppet army. From a nationalist point of view, the collaborationists who covered up their self-serving motives and later defended their actions as a crooked path to national salvation had a negative image. In response to Communist expansion, the Nationalist government acquiesced in the measure of collaborating with the puppet troops to annihilate the Communists. To reinforce the battles at the front, the Nationalist government also attempted to plot anti-Japanese mutinies among the puppet troops, but its plan was never implemented. The Northwestern Army forces planned to build an alliance in order to survive as a third force both in the confrontation between the Chinese government and the Japanese army and in the confrontation between the Nationalists and the Communists. Yet, due to the tight control exercised by the Japanese in North China, it was difficult for the Northwestern Army to gain momentum as a third force. After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the Northwestern Army had to take sides in the Civil War, and this dilemma caused its final collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2005 anti-Japan protests in China inaugurated a new era of Chinese popular nationalism with their pervasive visuality and virtuality. The outpouring of emotions in cityscapes and cyberspaces – anger, outrage, zealousness and even pleasure – requires us to take emotion, passion, hope or sheer delight seriously and to recognize the power of some of the more alarming forms of popular nationalist sentimentality. This chapter analyses one instance of Sino-Japanese relations: the epithet of ‘riben guizi’ or Japanese devils in Chinese popular culture in four historical moments: late-Sinocentric imperium, high imperialism, socialist nationalism and post-socialist globalization. I want to suggest that while this ‘hate word’ performs an affective politics of recognition stemming from an ineluctable trauma of imperialist violence, it ultimately fails in establishing a politics of reconciliation. I argue that anti-Japanism in China is less about Japan than China's own self-image mediated through its asymmetrical power relations with Japan throughout its modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most notable attempts by Japan towards fostering regionalism in recent years has been through its active and positive participation in the East Asia Summit (EAS), envisioned to be a stepping stone towards the formation of an East Asian Community (EAC). The idea behind regionalism and efforts towards the EAS and EAC are to be perceived within the broader context of Tokyo's attempts to shape the regional environment and influence policies in the region. Its primary goal is to neutralize and dilute the influence of China. The EAS and EAC are bound to bring India and Japan together on a common platform which will be mutually beneficial for both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the Japanese media's response to Chinese poison pot-stickers (gyoza) in Japan's food system as they debate and guide consumer-citizens' feelings of increasing vulnerability as individuals in the global market, the nation, and families. Global food becomes a key metaphor for threats to national borders and the need for national food, yet simultaneously for inevitable risk to globally attuned stomachs that can be controlled only by alert housewives and education of the young. Food terror effectively signals citizens' lack of protection in risk society, but leaves unsaid important differences among consumer-citizens to save themselves with scarce Japanese-made food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent naval ship visits and exchanges of goodwill between China and Japan suggest an improvement in the two countries' bilateral relationship, which had been steadily deteriorating since the late 1990s. In the longer term, however, Sino-Japanese relations will likely be tested or constrained by five key sets of issues: (1) territorial and resource disputes, (2) nationalism and issues of mutual antipathy, (3) Taiwan's political status, (4) the rapid rise of China's military power, and (5) the U.S.-Japan security alliance. The manner in which these issues are managed or resolved will likely play a major role in shaping the Sino-Japanese relationship and thus the overall geopolitical environment in East Asia. A key complicating factor in the relationship, however, is the persistence of divergent worldviews: Chinese leaders appear to be more consistently persuaded by realist notions of international politics, whereas Japanese leaders tend to favor liberal-institutionalist values. The two countries may use these different lenses to view the same incident or issue, potentially creating misunderstanding and miscalculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Sino-Japanese relations by looking at how negative sentiments towards Japan among the Chinese population are deployed as a form of political capital in struggles among the Chinese Communist Party elite. It gains insights into this process by looking at how such sentiments have been deployed to challenge the legitimacy of three CCP leaders since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, resulting in the downfall of two. The conclusions from these case studies are then used to understand how the current Chinese leadership has engineered the 'new starting point' in the relationship with Japan in the context of the movement from a 'winner takes all' type of factional politics into one characterized by 'power balancing' among the elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes Sino-Japanese relations in the beginning of the 21st century. Responses of both countries to the changing international environment in the 1990s; Potential dangers of miscalculations in the fluidity of relations among major powers; Domestic factors affecting the bilateral relationship such as trade and rising nationalism in both countries.

The rise of nationalisms in Japan and China in the 1980s and 1990s aroused much interest in Western, Chinese and Japanese academic and journalistic circles and prompted some analysts to speculate about potential conflict between China and Japan. This article questions such arguments by examining nationalisms in China and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies similar trends in the resurgence of state nationalism and cultural nationalism in both countries, and argues that, although élites in both countries were active in promoting patriotism in the 1980s and 1990s, their efforts had limited impact, whereas cultural nationalism, on the other hand, managed to capture the popular mood. The article suggests that, nonetheless, because both types of nationalism were predominantly inward-oriented responses to domestic and external changes, relations between China and Japan remained relatively stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]