December 13th marked the anniversary of the Nanjing massacre during WWII by Japanese troops. During the morning the army bases around the city blasted their sirens to commemorate the anniversary, much to the excitement of school children and confusion of their foreign teacher.
Before I came to Nanjing, a few of the guidebooks I read mentioned in the etiquette section that one of the few topics to avoid speaking about in China was the Japanese, this holding especially true in Nanjing. (Other things to avoid discussing until you’re good pals includes Tibet, politics, Tiananmen… What you would expect.) A decent amount of the young children I teach have expressed a severe dislike of Japan, going so far as to put huge X’s over the country on maps in their textbooks and express extreme confusion when I inform them that I used to live in Tokyo and loved it. Not all students are like this, of course, but to be honest the vast majority of the elementary students I teach dislike Japan. I’m unsure if it’s a taught behavior from their parents and/or grandparents, or something they picked up innately. It’s unlikely to be learned in a classroom setting, however; they’re much too young to be learning about WWII out of a textbook in their courses yet.
As for the older students I teach in their early teens, fewer of them have the same dislike of Japan--a lot of my 7th graders enjoy Japanese anime and some even take the language as an elective in school. For the most part, the students seem to grow out of their hatred for Japan as they learn that the people who committed crimes during WWII are not necessarily the same people living in Japan today.
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Recently there have been many anti-Japan protests around China; Japan is still seen through a different lens than, say, how most Americans view Japan. These protests stem from the recent fallout between Japan and China over the Chinese fishing captain who was detained in Japan. He has since been released, and the conflict in North and South Korea has suddenly taken center stage on the political level.
Sometimes in my mind, I feel like… if eastern Asia was a big family, China would be the oldest brother and Japan would be the next oldest, but suddenly ‘grew up’ very fast and had a few crazy years where he acted poorly. His siblings still haven’t quite forgiven him for it yet, and China’s still thinking, “Who does this guy think he is? Doesn’t he remember I’m the oldest?”
Well, that’s certainly an over-simplification, but it helps explain some things to my 7th graders anyway…
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