Anti-Japanese sentiment

Anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. peaked during World War II. The government subsidized the production of propaganda posters using exaggerated stereotypes.

Anti-Japanese sentiment involves hatred, grievance, distrust, dehumanization, intimidation, fear, hostility, and/or general dislike of the Japanese people as ethnic or national group, Japan, Japanese culture, and/or anything Japanese. Sometimes the term Japanophobia is also used.

Overview

Anti-Japanese sentiments range from animosity towards the Japanese government's actions and disdain for Japanese culture to racism against the Japanese people. Sentiments of dehumanization have been fueled by anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II.

Anti-Japanese sentiment is strongest in China and South Korea.

In the past, anti-Japanese sentiment contained innuendos of Japanese people as barbaric. Japan was intent on adopting Western ways in an attempt to join the West as an industrialized imperial power. Fukuzawa Yukichi's Leaving Asia was the 1885 article that provided the intellectual basis for Japan's modernization and Westernization. However, a lack of acceptance of the Japanese in the West made integration and assimilation difficult. One commonly held view was that the Japanese were sub-human or evolutionarily inferior. Japanese culture was viewed with suspicion and even disdain.

While passions have settled somewhat since Japan's defeat in World War II, tempers continue to flare on occasion over the widespread perception that the Japanese government has made insufficient penance for their past atrocities, or has sought to whitewash the history of these events . Today, though the Japanese Government keeps giving frequent compensations, anti-Japanese sentiment continues based on lingering effects of Japanese military aggression, especially war atrocities committed before and until the end of World War II. Japan's delay in clearing more than 700,000 pieces of life threatening and environment contaminating Japanese chemical weapons (according to Japanese Government [4]) buried in China at the end of WWII is another cause of anti-Japanese sentiment.

Periodically, individuals within Japan spur external criticism. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was heavily criticized by South Korea and China for annually paying his respects to the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines all those who fought and died for Japan during World War II, including 1,068 convicted war criminals. Right-wing nationalist groups have produced history textbooks whitewash Japanese atrocities , and the recurring controversies over these books occasionally attract hostile foreign attention. Others, particularly Japanese, believe that much regional anti-Japanese sentiment stems from ethnocentrism and lingering hatred.

Anti-Japanese sentiment is also based on unfair trade practices sometimes encountered more recently . Some anti-Japanese sentiment originates from business practices used by some Japanese companies, such as dumping.

United States

Pre-Twentieth Century

In the United States, anti-Japanese sentiment had its beginnings well before the Second World War. As early as the late 1800s, Asian immigrants were subject to much racial prejudice in the United States. Laws were passed that openly discriminated against Japanese, as well as Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos. Many of these laws stated that Asians could not become citizens of the United States and could not hold basic rights, such as owning land. These laws were greatly detrimental to the newly arrived immigrants, since many of them were farmers and had little choice but to become migrant workers. Some cite the formation of the Asiatic Exclusion League as the start of the anti-Japanese movement in California.

Early Twentieth Century

In the twentieth century many Americans regarded Japan as an enlightened country in the Far East that had success in emulating the West and exerting itself as a colonial power, much like many powerful European countries at the time. However, this perception began to change as more reports of Japanese brutalities in its conquered territories began to pour into the American press and helped change public opinion.

The Japanese invasion of China in 1931 and the annexation of Manchuria was widely criticized in the US. In addition, efforts by the China lobby for American intervention to push Japan out of China also played a role in shaping American foreign policy. As more and more unfavorable reports of Japan came to the attention of American government, embargoes on oil and other supplies were placed on Japan, partly out of genuine concern for the Chinese populace and partly out of concern for American interests in the Pacific. Furthermore, the European-American population became very pro-China and anti-Japan, an example being a grass-roots campaign for women to stop buying silk stockings, because the material was procured from Japan through its colonies.

When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, European-American public opinion was decidedly pro-China, with eyewitness reports by Western journalists on atrocities committed against Chinese civilians further strengthening anti-Japanese sentiments. African-American sentiments could be quite different than the mainstream, with organizations like the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World {PMEW} which promised equality and land distribution under Japanese rule. The PMEW had thousands of members hopefully preparing for liberation from white supremacy with the arrival of the Japanese Imperial Army. This included stockpiling arms.

During World War II

Main article: Empire of Japan

The most profound cause of anti-Japanese sentiment had its beginning in the Attack on Pearl Harbor, which propelled the United States into World War II against the Empire of Japan and its allies. Many Americans regarded the Sunday-morning surprise attack as an exhibition of cowardice and were taken by complete surprise. Japanese conduct during the war did little to quell anti-Japanese sentiment; fanning the flames of outrage were the treatment of American and other western POWs, the use of POWs as slave labor for Japanese industries and the Bataan Death March, the Kamikaze attacks on American ships, and atrocities committed on Wake Island and elsewhere.

An estimated 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans from the West Coast were interned regardless of their attitude to the US or Japan. They were held for the duration of the war in the inner US. The large Japanese population of Hawaii was not massively relocated though in spite of their proximity to vital military areas.

In addition, the extreme Japanese reluctance to accept defeat and extensive propaganda dehumanized the Japanese in American eyes — this is illustrated by the American propaganda film My Japan. Interestingly, this film's portrayal of the Japanese is very similar to the way they are portrayed in the Japanese government's own propaganda films.

A detailed treatment of the mutual animosity between the U.S. and Japan during the war is John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. (ISBN 0-394-75172-8).

Since World War II

In the 1970s and 1980s, the waning fortunes of heavy industry in the United States prompted layoffs and hiring slowdowns just as counterpart businesses in Japan were making major inroads into U.S. markets. Nowhere was this more visible than in the automobile industry, where the lethargic Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) could only watch in horror as their former customers turned out in droves for Japanese imports from Toyota and Nissan, a consequence of the 1973 oil crisis. The anti-Japanese sentiment manifested itself in occasional public destruction of Japanese cars and, most shockingly, in the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American beaten to death when he was mistaken to be Japanese.

Other highly symbolic deals — for instance, the sale to Japanese firms of famous American commercial and cultural symbols such as Columbia Records, Columbia Pictures, and the Rockefeller Center building — further fanned anti-Japanese sentiment. The unease continued well into the early 1990s.

Popular culture of the period reflected American's growing distrust of Japan. The discomfort many Americans felt about Japan's domination of certain industries and their continuing acquisition of US businesses was clearly manifest, particularly in futuristic period pieces such as Back to the Future II and Robocop 3, where Americans are frequently shown as working precariously under Japanese superiors. Criticism was also lobbied in many novels of the day. Author Michael Crichton took a break from science fiction to write Rising Sun, a murder mystery (later made into a feature film) involving Japanese businessmen in the U.S. Likewise, In Tom Clancy's book, Debt of Honor, Clancy implies that Japan's prosperity is due primarily to unequal trading terms, and portrays Japan's business leaders acting in a power hungry cabal.

The animosity which peaked in the 1980s, when the term "Japan bashing" became popular, had largely faded by the late 1990s. Japan's waning fortunes, coupled with an upsurge in the U.S. economy as the Internet took off, largely crowded anti-Japanese sentiment out of the popular media, which has turned to other issues.

On 2 March 2007, "The comfort women" issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II in an orchestrated way. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion in narrow sense." Before he spoke, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers also sought to revise Yohei Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women. - The New York Times editorial quickly refuted Abe's statement: “These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army’s involvement is documented in the government’s own defense files.”

China

Main article: Anti-Japanese sentiment in China

Anti-Japanese sentiment in China is an issue with old roots. Japan started off like other Western powers by annexing land from China towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. Dissatisfaction with the settlement and the Twenty-One Demands by the Japanese government led to a severe boycott of Japanese products in China. Bitterness in China persists over the atrocities of the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's post-war actions. Today, textbook revisionism and censorship remain contentious issues.

Korea

Main article: Origins of Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea

The issue of Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea is complex and multi-facited. Anti-Japanese attitudes in the Korean Peninsula can be traced far back to the Japanese pirates raids and the Japanese invasion of 1592, but are largely a product of the period of Japanese rule in Korea from 1910-1945. Today, issues of textbook revisionism, controversy over Japanese policy regarding WWII and national territorial disputes between the two countries perpetuate this sentiment.

Other nations

After Germany's defeat in the World War I, the Japanese were a target of discrimination along with Jews, as many Germans resented Japan's seizure of its colonies in the Pacific. In Mein Kampf, Japanese are described as an inferior people.

Many people in countries which were Allies during World War II continue to campaign for compensation for being subject to forced labour, malnutrition, preventable illness and other hardships, as POWs of Japan during World War II. For example, some elderly people in the Netherlands express anti-Japanese sentiment, insisting there was unjust and abusive treatment by the Japanese in concentration camps during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies during 1942-1945. Together with people from the former KNIL, they have protested repeatedly against the visit of the emperor of Japan to the Netherlands.

In Australia, the White Australia Policy was partly inspired by fears in the late 19th century that if large numbers of Asian immigrants were allowed, they would have a severe and adverse effect on wages, the earnings of small business people and other elements of the standard of living. Nevertheless, a significant numbers of Japanese immigrants did arrive in Australia prior to 1900 (perhaps most significantly in the town of Broome). By the late 1930s, Australians feared that Japanese military strength might lead to expansion in South East Asia and the Pacific, perhaps even an invasion of Australia itself. This resulted in a ban on iron ore exports to Japan, from 1938. During World War II atrocities were frequently committed to Australians who surrendered, or attempted to surrender to Japanese soldiers. An example of this was the Tol Plantation massacre, where about 150 Australian troops were bayoneted to death by Japanese soldiers, which occurred during the Battle of Rabaul (1942)

In Russia, the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 halted Imperial Russia's ambitions in the East. Later, during the Russian Civil War, Japan was part of the Western interventionist forces that helped to occupy Vladivostok until October of 1922 with a puppet White government under Grigorii Semenov. At the end of WWII, the Soviet Army in Operation August Storm captured nearly 600,000 Japanese POWs. Of these, 473,000 were repatriated, with 55,000 having died in Soviet captivity and the fate of the rest being unknown. Presumably, many were deported to China or North Korea to serve as forced laborers and soldiers.

Yasukuni Shrine

Main article: Yasukuni Shrine

The Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, Japan. It is the resting place of thousands of not only Japanese soldiers, but also Korean soldiers killed in various wars, but mostly in World War II. The shrine includes 13 Class A criminals such as Hideki Tojo and Hirota Koki, who were convicted and executed for their roles in the Japanese invasions of the China, Korea, and other parts of East Asia after the remission to them under Treaty of San Francisco, A total of 1,068 convicted war criminals are enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine.

In recent years, the Yasukuni Shrine has become a sticking point in the relations of Japan and her neighbours. The enshrinement of war criminals, honoring them for having fought and died for their country (even though the Japanese constitution implies the separation of church and state) has greatly angered the people of various countries invaded by those same men. In addition, the shrine published a pamphlet stating that "[war] was necessary in order for us to protect the independence of Japan and to prosper together with our Asian neighbors" and that the war criminals were "cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces". In fact the fairness of these trials is a controversial subject among jurists and historians in the West as well as in Japan. The former prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, has visited the shrine 5 times; every visit caused immense uproar in China and Korea. His successor, Shinzo Abe, is a usual visitor of Yasukuni too.

Japanese politicians have responded by saying that the shrine, as well as visits to it, is protected by the constitutional right of freedom of religion.

Derogatory terms

There are a variety of derogatory terms referring to Japan. Many of these terms are viewed as racist. However, these terms do not necessarily refer to the Japanese race as a whole; they can also refer to specific policies, or specific time periods in history.

In English

Especially prevalent during World War II, the word "Jap" (or "Nip", short for Nippon) has been used in the United States as a derogatory word for Japanese.

In Chinese

• 小日本 (xiǎo Rìběn) — Literally "Little Japan"(ese). This term is so common that it has very little impact left. The term can be used to refer to either Japan or individual Japanese. "小", or the word "little", is usually construed as "puny" or "lowly", not "spunky".
• 日本鬼子 (Rìběn guǐzi) — Literally "Japanese devils". This is used mostly in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War, when Japan invaded and occupied large areas of China.
• 倭 (Wō) — This was an ancient Chinese name for Japan, but was also adopted by the Japanese. Today, its usage in Chinese is usually intended to give a negative connotation (see Wōkòu below). The character is said to also mean "dwarf", although that meaning was not apparent when the name was first used. See Wa (Japan).
• 倭寇 (Wōkòu) — Originally referred to Japanese pirates and armed sea merchants who raided the Chinese coastline during the Ming Dynasty (see Wokou). The term was adopted during the Second Sino-Japanese War to refer to invading Japanese forces, (similarly to Germans being called Huns). The word is today sometimes used to refer to all Japanese people in extremely negative contexts.

In Korean

• Waenom (왜놈, 倭놈) — Means “short bastard” or “shortie”. This term refers to the ancient name of Japan given by China, Wae (see Wō above). Koreans also use this term to make fun of the common stereotype there of Japanese people being short.
• Jjokbari (쪽바리) — In slang meaning “pig's feet”, this term refers to tabi, traditional Japanese style socks which feature a gap separating the big toe and the four smaller toes. The term is also used by ethnic Koreans in Japan.
• Chinilpa (Japanophile) (친일파, 親日派) Literally meaning “Japan-friendly faction” which was a Korean government faction formed by Lee Wan-Yong. It is now used as an extremely negative term to Japanese-influenced Koreans.

See also

• Japanese war crimes
• Korean-Japanese disputes
• Okinotorishima
• United States Executive Order 9066
• Japanese Canadian internment
• Anti-Japanese sentiment culture of Korea

External links

• China's angry young focus their hatred on old enemy
• The Impact of Asian-Pacific Migration on U.S. Immigration Policy
• "China Is Pushing and Scripting Anti-Japanese Protests", The New York Times 2005-04-15
• Essay: "Origins of the April 2005 Anti-Japanese Protests in the People's Republic of China", by Aron Patrick