Chinese Whispers: Has China got over the Japanese invasion?

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

For China, WWII started in 1937 with the Japanese invasion, two years before Hitler invaded Poland. Japan would occupy China until its surrender in 1945, in the process committing atrocities like the rape of Nanjing. This was the second Japanese invasion in fifty years.

Yet decades after the war, when I grew up in Nanjing, Japanese food was all the craze and it was Japanese anime that kids watched and Japanese fashion that teenagers craved. So has China got over its wartime hatred of Japan?

On this episode, I’m joined by the Tokyo-based Chinese translator Dylan Levi King, who you might remember from our previous conversation on ketamine use in China. We’re going to be chatting about China’s attitude to Japan today, and the contradictions within that, rather than focusing on the history between the two countries. If you want to learn more about that part of things – there’s nowhere better to go than Professor Rana Mitter’s book, China’s War with Japan. Dylan and I chat about the Chinese caricatures of Japanese soldiers on screen, the Japanese porn star who overcame the two countries’ enmity and the jingri – the Chinese who identify as ‘spiritually Japanese’.

Dylan reflects on the cognitive dissonance – or disassociation – that the Chinese hold between Japanese politics and Japanese soft power. For example, he tells me that:

‘I used to go to this clothing store when I was a student in China, and in the store they would sell Japanese fashion like BAPE, but on the doorstep walking into the place there was a Japanese flag on the ground, so you could trample on the Japanese flag as you walk into buy all your Japanese fashion.’

Japanese nationalism, in return, seems to be getting louder, whether it’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine housing war criminals, or a continued refusal to acknowledge the war-time trafficking of Chinese and Korean women as sex slaves – euphemistically known as ‘comfort women’. Yet Dylan argues that this is just all bark, no bite:

‘China rising on its doorstep and Japan’s economy, since 1990, not really improving, has exacerbated that feeling in Japan of wanting to stand up, even though they can’t really. So it’s all performative and useless.’

Transcript

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0:00.0	Subscribe to The Spectator this summer and get the next 10 weeks of the magazine as well as unlimited access to our website and app for just £10.
0:06.0	Not only that, we'll send you a bottle of PIMS absolutely free.
0:09.0	Only while stocks last, so go to www.
0:12.0	wwwpictator.com.com.
0:14.0	com to claim this offer now. Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu.
0:29.4	Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.
0:37.2	There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge
0:40.0	and some context as well.
0:42.0	How did the Chinese see these issues?
0:45.5	For China, World War II started in 1937 with the Japanese invasion,
0:50.8	two years before Hitler invaded Poland.
0:53.4	Japan would occupy China until its surrender in
0:55.5	1945 in the process committing atrocities like the rape of Nanjing. This was the second Japanese
1:01.3	invasion of China in 50 years. Yet decades after the war, when I grew up in Nanjing,
1:07.1	Japanese food was all the craze and it was Japanese anime that kids watched and Japanese fashion that teenagers craved.
1:13.3	So has China got over its wartime hatred of Japan?
1:17.2	I'm joined today by the Tokyo-based Chinese translator Dylan Levi-King, who you might remember from our previous conversation on ketamine use in China.
1:25.4	And if you haven't listened to that, do go check it out.
1:27.8	We're going to be chatting about China's attitude to Japan today and the contradictions within
1:32.1	that. We're not going to be focusing so much on history between the two countries that I've
1:36.6	just done a whistle-stopped-to-off. If you want to learn more about that part of things,
1:40.8	there's nowhere better to go than Professor Ranaamitter's book, China's War with Japan. Dylan, welcome to the podcast. To start with, can you talk a little bit about the
	...

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