TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book
"Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say
that Japan built the South Korea
of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at
all in Korean culture to be proud of."
comment>hating the korean wave is sour grape, plain and
simple.
but to say japan built korea, we ll do better by asking the question:
who v just built japan, after first destroying it completely?
even better yet, were the koreans the ancesters of japanese? so,
let's forgive and forget the offsprings for the somewhat savage way of
searching for their roots. And talking about roots, how much this
culture root is still left anywhere that we can be proud of.
let's rally
around the korea's lead in reviving the asian culture by steering away
from the anti-cultural westernization.
In another comic book, "Introduction to China,"
which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with
cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today,
its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions.
There's nothing attractive."
comment>cannibalism? it may not be a bad idea to have a
universal law that says we all must eat whatever and whoever we
kill.
nothing attractive about chinese? so why
everybody in the world is buying made-in-china? but i do
agree that today's china is not as attractive as the time before it
bowed to
westernization, about half century behind japan, though.
seems everyone in asia has jumped on the bandwagon to make himself less
attractive during the last century.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the
rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's
apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last
century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like
the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to
challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural
leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
comment>please note carefully that
it's only "last century and a half", not the thousands years before
when all asians were doing fine and wanted to be left along --
gradually merging into one people, ultimately by culture. the
recent "challenge to japan's position ... as leader" is the most
unfortuniate part
of contemporary asian history, for its a certification into the
brotherhood of barbarians.
i think the chinese and koreans should feel regretable and apologize to
the japanese for excluding them outside the asian family in the past as
midget pirates.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
"I wonder why they haven't grown up at all," Mr. Nishio said. "They don't change. I wonder why China and Korea haven't learned anything."
Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea,
said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as
Fukuzawa advocated. "Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China,"
Mr. Nishio said. "Economically, it's difficult. But in our hearts,
psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
comment>this guy nishio has a point, because the other option is:
not
cut itself off from china and korea and eventually united into one
country. which one would you choose? we need to ask this question
more often, especially to those japanese people, who are still not
aware that they are asians no more.
The
reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with
full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World
Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the
so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South
Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop
cultural exports.
comment>what's this animalistic sport of soccer doing in asia
that's for the
strong body and
weak
mind and discriminates against the asians by it's very unintelligent
design? our sports and the sports of modern athletes of women,
seniors, techies, and everybody who like to play rather than watch
are pingpong, badmington and others that are not dangerous.
the addiction to watching major professional sports on TV in america
has been a major cause of the obesity epidemic there.
The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind "Hating the Korean Wave," began his strip on his own Web site then.
"The 'Hate Korea'
feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide
Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still,
the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors,
suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had
believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu
Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually
taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
comment>see, soccer also incites mob.
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."
As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Mr.
Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it
doesn't mean anything to them."
comment>all asians must heed yoshida's message: the japanese need
help, not more bashing.
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.
"It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of
major nations, not themselves," Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.
comment>the real trick is how to be a true asian and swallow the
insults, yet still
refrain from bashing.
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's
conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward
Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the
book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the
Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
comment>difficult to tell which is worse: racism or unracism?
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most
Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of
the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way
to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.
comment>now, here's the medicine that's hard to swallow: meiji
was definitely a bigger shithead than china's own shoong yat
sen. but history should be careful in distinquishing
between the meaning of "emulate" from what really happened: america
shuffled it down the
japanese throat, then and now.
In
1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father
of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of
a $100 bill) - wrote "Leaving Asia," the essay that many scholars
believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan's subsequent
invasion and colonization of Asian nations.
comment>so, the 2 abombs were one for meiji, the other for
fukuzawa.
Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly
backward.
comment>sound familier? dogs running around everywhere are
barking
the same tune.
Writing
that "those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations," Fukuzawa
said Japan should depart from Asia and "cast our lot with the civilized
countries of the West." He wrote of Japan's Asian neighbors, "We should
deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."
comment>consider the single day of infamy: pearl harbor.
double
day of infamy: hiroshima and nagasaki.
triple day of infamy:new york, warshington and lost angels. the
student is faithfully following the teacher's intelligent design for
world doomination.
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.
"The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy," said Mr.
Nagayama.
comment>what can i say? -- misfired propaganda exposed
the deep-rooted inferiority complex.
Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.
The
book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says,
without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of
the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of
disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a
large scale are from China."
comment>well, once again we are back to the world's oldest
profession. it
seems when the gender equity is mixed in with scum culture, the real
difference
in monkey business between the sexes is now: in
rich countries you dont have to pay. in poor countries you do have to
pay. but to root out this haunting business of prostitution, one
should start
with princess diana, jackie onasis and madam chiangkaishit, who led way
in selling to the highest bidder and, sometimes, bidders.
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.
The
book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 - which researched
biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other
experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually
formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.
comment>china and korea should consider this as a japanese
propaganda job
done so poorly that the backlash is causing the whole island to stink
all through out asia and for a long time to come, when compared to how
the victorious americans and its
cronies
had managed to get off with flying color after having started the
insanity in the first place.
"The
only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food," said Ko
Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book.
Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on
cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of
their wartime atrocities in China. The book's main author and
cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.
comment>chinese ate the japanese invaders? that's also a
good law: eat the invaders. hear that, iraqis?
Like
many in Taiwan who are virulently anti-China, Mr. Ko is fiercely
pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite
of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in China
early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books
surged this year, to one million.
comment>another reason for stop the bashing.
"I have to thank China,
really," Mr. Ko said. "But I'm disappointed that the sales of my books
could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the
demonstrations."
comment>not often i run into some one who's more generous than i
am toward the japs. but again, being a dog has its
advantages.
CONCLUSION>
While the siblings are puppy-fighting each other with demos and
comic books, some special delivery came to the family's front
door. As Bush is global trotting for peace and friendship, some
Taiwan TV station reported, "abombs were delivered to Okinawa, with the
Japanese government opening one eye and closing another". This
time it's not for dropping but rather for the protection of Japan, part
of Korea(the south) and part of China(Taiwan).