Japan comic books fan hatred towards China By Norimitsu Onishi (The New York Times) Updated: 2005-11-21 09:35 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.
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.
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.
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.
Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly backward.
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."
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.
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