Search

Critical media studies have long understood the role of the media in not just illuminating disputes between nations but in inflaming them. The media can be used to inform or distort the background and causes of conflict and arouse public opinion. This article surveys the potentially calamitous decline of public perceptions in China and Japan toward the other and asks if the media is a monitor of this decline or a party to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of nationalism and interstate frictions on international economic relations by analyzing market reaction to adverse shocks to Sino-Japanese relations in 2005 and 2010. Japanese companies with high China exposure suffer relative declines during each event window; a symmetric effect is observed for Chinese companies with high Japanese exposure. The effect on Japanese companies is more pronounced for those operating in industries dominated by Chinese state-owned enterprises, whereas firms with high Chinese employment experience lower declines. These results emphasize the role of countries' economic and political institutions in mediating the impact of interstate frictions on firm-level outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Free and easy access to an unusually rich variety of sources (primarily books, newspapers, and periodicals) is the hallmark of the Database of Sources Concerning the War of Resistance against Japan and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations (Kang Ri zhanzheng yu jindai Zhong Ri guanxi wenxian shuju pingtai), launched in 2017. Continuously expanding with new uploads, this database contains both familiar and rare sources for the study of not just the two topics that make up the database name but also many other aspects of Republican China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's new treaties with the Western powers came into force in the summer of 1899. These signified Japan's recognition as a modern state, but also opened the whole of Japan to residence and commerce for the nationals of the Western powers. This article examines Japan's legislative response to this new era of both political equality and expanded foreign intercourse and exchange. This comprised two new laws, Japan's first nationality law and new entry restrictions, both of which defined the boundaries of Japanese identity. The West played a paramount role in the crafting of these laws, but often forgotten is the role played by China. By examining the international contexts and the debates that attended the passage of these laws, this article shows that each law enacted a form of exclusion: the former sought to mitigate Western influence, while the latter sought to minimize Chinese immigration. Together, they reflected Japan's international position between two others: China and the West. [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]

In the midst of rising tension between China and Japan, two powerful countries in Asia, the favorable attitudes of each country's citizens toward the other country have dropped to a historical low. The Taiwan issue, historical legacy, island disputes, and maritime resource competition are major obstacles in Sino-Japanese relations, but the most fundamental issue is a deep-seated mutual distrust and suspicion between the two countries, which result in rising threat perceptions. Beyond the structural and political elite-centered approaches, this study examines the evidence related to the three approaches (face-to-face contact, cross-cultural exposure, and social identity) to reduce mutual distrust and antipathy in the two countries. With a careful analysis of the survey data, this study sheds light on the conditions under which contact (a) results in improved attitudes toward outgroup, (b) has little or no effect on intergroup relations, and (c) yields more prejudice and hostility toward the outgroup. The findings of this study not only identify factors that could facilitate mutual understanding between Chinese and Japanese people and more favorable impressions of one another, but are also relevant to planning interventions to reduce prejudice and distrust among people from different races, religions, and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Since 1945, the United States (US) has served as a focal point of both Left-wing and Right-wing Japanese nationalism. Both sides argued that the US was an arrogant hegemon that unjustly robbed Japan of its autonomy, and prevented Japan from achieving its own ideal national identity. Both sides frequently demanded that Japan should be more ‘resolute’ and resist unfair demands emanating from the US. In recent years, however, both camps are increasingly using the same rhetoric to criticise the Japanese government's China policy. China is also being depicted as an overbearing state that unfairly browbeats Japan into making diplomatic concessions. Given the similarities between the portrayal of China and the US, has China now become a nationalist focal point forboththe Japanese Left and Right? Utilising constructivist insights, this article seeks to shed light on this question, by examining how the Japanese Right and Left portray China, and explores the implications for Japan's China policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the role of public opinion in Japan in directly influencing the Japanese government's decision to nationalize the Senkaku Islands in 2012. The public mood in Japan is becoming increasingly nationalistic. Although this does not immediately mean the return of militarism in the country, such a mood is especially evident with respect to China. The nationalization of the Islands took place within this nationalistic domestic environment. In the case of the nationalization, public opinion was channeled most notably through Tokyo Governor Ishihara. His plan to purchase the Islands and strong public support for his plan eventually forced the central government's intervention. Prime Minister Noda simply could not force Ishihara to give up his plan because going against such a popular politician who was enjoying strong public support would almost certainly have caused a strong public backlash and resulted in electoral punishment. On the other hand, Noda was also concerned that Tokyo's successful acquisition of the Islands would lead to severe criticism of his government for not properly protecting Japan's territorial integrity. There was also a more serious concern that Ishihara's control of the Islands might lead to a change of the status quo and thus dangerously provoke China. Therefore, Noda had no choice but to intervene and nationalize the Islands. If he was also seeking to mobilize public opinion in his favor, he was not entirely successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The present study validated implicit animosity as a unique determinant of consumer behavior in the context of Chinese animosity toward Japan. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was employed to measure implicit Chinese animosity toward Japan. The results showed that (a) implicit animosity was distinct from consumer ethnocentrism; (b) implicit animosity was significantly correlated with war animosity, but not with economic animosity; and (c) implicit animosity exerted negative impacts on purchase intention, independent of explicit animosity, consumer ethnocentrism, and product judgment. Taken together, these findings provide initial evidence of discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity for implicit animosity, highlighting the importance of taking implicit animosity into account in future animosity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the disputes between Northeast Asian countries, particularly South Korea, China and Japan as seen in the changes in descriptions of history in Japanese textbooks, among others. It cites that the publication of the second report of the Japan-Republic of Korea (ROK) Joint History Research Committee showed the animosity between the two parties. It also presents the studies on the historical perceptions in each country, and the rise of Japanese nationalism.

Historical disputes and nationalism continue to be issues of concern and controversy in the relationship between Japan and China. In 2005, popular nationalist sentiment culminated in nationwide anti-Japanese movements in China. This led to a crucial shift in the way China and Japan deal with history and popular nationalism. An unprecedented dialogue on war memory was initiated in late 2006, and the Sichuan earthquake relief effort in mid-2008 marked a further departure from earlier patterns. The Chinese government shifted away from conventional historiography that largely fed negative images of Japan. While these developments point to new, cooperative attitudes that aim to contain popular nationalist sentiment in manageable proportions, relations are nevertheless increasingly obscured by other tensions in the bilateral relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the strategic manipulation of national Red Cross Societies as markers of sovereignty during a period of heightened world nationalism in the early twentieth century. Using Chinese archival materials, it examines how in 1916, on China's much contested Shandong Peninsula, a Japanese delegation set up a Japanese Red Cross chapter and hospital in the Chinese port city of Longkou, in flagrant disregard of widely recognized principles of sovereignty and international law. Occurring just as the larger 'Shandong Question' was roiling the international legal community, this incident shows how the local practice of international legal statutes diverged from a more publicized, transnational discussion of those same principles. The article explores this disjuncture, and considers one instance of what I term the differentiated practice of international law: the early twentiethcentury Japanese 'double policy' - 'one policy for the East and another for the West.' Revealing much about the use of humanitarian activity and the laws of war to further national agendas, the Longkou Incident was later used by the Chinese Red Cross Society as precedent for checking further incursions into China's sovereignty. [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]

While Sino-Japanese relations are quite stable presently, it was as recent as 2004–2005 that the two nations slid into the worst bilateral quagmire in decades. When in 2007 Japan was China’s third largest trading partner and China surpassed the US to become Japan’s largest trading partner, what is eating these two otherwise very pragmatic traders? History, nationalism and face, enabled by recent changes in the strategic environment, are the factors that have been most salient in bringing about the plunge in Sino-Japanese relations in 2004–05 and though Sino-Japanese relations have been much better since, these factors hang like a storm front over Sino-Japanese relations today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's invasion of China in the summer of 1937 dealt a devastating blow to Chinese journalism. Yet despite the hardships, China's wartime reporters produced a legacy of vivid writing. In the face of a series of major defeats, the journalists attempted to shore up morale and stressed the heroic resistance of Chinese forces. They reported on Japanese atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing, but not to such an extent that might erode morale. During the Maoist era, the legacy of this war reportage largely faded from a public memory which privileged the revolution. When a "new remembering" of the war emerged in the reform era, the heroic resistance narrative from war reportage dovetailed nicely with the new nationalism of today's China. But this literature has been less helpful in developing the theme of Chinese victimhood, a key component of the new memory of the war. Finally, memoir literature, so common in most combatant nations, has been problematic in China. Those who remember their war experiences do so through the prism of later traumas, particularly the Cultural Revolution. [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]

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 takes a critical look at conventional studies of Sino-Japanese relations and East Asian security. While realizing that memories of Japanese aggression are a key causal factor of mutual suspicions and security dilemmas between China and Japan, mainstream studies do not offer us concrete solutions to this problem because their solutions are either military-centric, or have an excessive focus on Chinese nationalism and China's “patriotic education” as a key causal factor of Sino-Japanese tensions. Such works ignore the fact that Japanese atonement for its historical wrongs is necessary to prevent mutual suspicions and security dilemmas emerging between China and Japan. The article argues that an apology by Japan for its past aggression could be suggested as a new, albeit non-military, security policy that could contribute to the overall stability of Sino-Japanese relations and Northeast Asia. The article puts forward some suggestions of what an apology may look like under this policy, and argues that this policy could to remove historical animosity toward Japan by demarcating the postwar Japanese state from its prewar counterpart, allowing China the opportunity to “desecuritize” its deeply held identity as a “victimized state” and the need for a dangerous Japanese “other” to shore up this identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in April 2005 and the Japanese reactions have been characterized as a "clash of nationalisms." This article examines in detail the nature of contemporary nationalism in both China and Japan, taking a number of current issues in the bilateral relationship as case studies. It differentiates between state and popular nationalism and between assertive and reactive nationalism. Focusing primarily on popular nationalism, the authors contend that in both China and Japan, contrary to perceptions within each country that the other country is practicing assertive nationalism, in fact reactive nationalism better encapsulates the type of nationalism that is occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of the article "Barren Senkaku Nationalism and China-Japan Conflict," by Wani Yuko which appeared in the May 25, 2012 issue of "Shukan Kinyobi." It provides a historical background of the ownerless islands and of the Bao-Diao Movement. It looks into the financial troubles faced by the Kurihara family, as well as the relationship between the religious organization called Kenshokai and the Kurihara family.