I'm yet to hear any opinion from a Japanese person other than "It belongs to Japan". I think it's a knee-jerk sentiment mostly motivated by nationalism.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

nadiatims wrote:

I'm yet to hear any opinion from a Japanese person other than "It belongs to Japan". I think it's a knee-jerk sentiment mostly motivated by nationalism.

About how many nationalists (such as the right-wing "black van" people) or Japanese people with nationalist sentiments are there in Japanese society, as a percentage?

no idea. The black van people are a minority, but there would be a lot more people than that holding moderately nationalistic views (though not necessarily in public). But I wasn't really talking about people being seriously nationalistic, just that for the 'man on the street' who hasn't necessarily read much or any varied opinion on the topic, the status quo opinion tends to be on the side of Japan. You'll tend to see this regarding opinions about koreans, reactions to the whaling issue, yasukuni etc.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

About how many nationalists (such as the right-wing "black van" people) or Japanese people with nationalist sentiments are there in Japanese society, as a percentage?

Theres a difference between ultra-conservative nationalists and just nationalism for your country. I imagine something like 95% of Japanese feel at least a bit about their country, which would be characterized by nationalism.

----

What I've decided on about the whole island issue is that China probably actually does think Japan is the owner of the islands. Considering how strong the backlash in the Chinese media and the fact that Chinese press have been buying full page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post in order to try and sway western opinion as well. Then compare it to how little Japan has tried to do anything to convince others. Then there is the whole "Return the Diaoyu islands to us" thing; not "Get off our islands or we'll shoot you." And then smaller issues such as "first seen" claims probably don't amount to much in terms of land ownership. If "I saw it first" actually meant anything, then Iceland would have a strong claim on Newfoundland since the Vikings set foot there first, but no one would even consider that. The fact that Japan put a bonito factory and lighthouse on it says a lot more. Still waiting to see whether anything comes of the latest stuff or if the situation just burns down.

Qwerty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre_denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_h … troversies

It was re: nationalism. Elements that from an outside perspective would be usually considered "far-right nationalism" is vowen into the Japanese school curriculum and constitute some widely held beliefs. This is not so different from how stereotypes about and biases against the Arab world among other things are constantly being repeated in Western school books and media.

A quick googling gave me this http://okwave.jp/qa/q1556808.html so here's your name 扶桑社の教科書 (well a book series, really). If you know nothing about ７３１部隊 then have a look at http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/731%E9%83%A8%E9%9A%8A and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 There are first-hand eye witness accounts of the atrocities carried out there, by Japanese who had everything to lose from telling the truth and were estranged by Japanese community for it. Moreover, it is known that the people working there burned a LOT of documents they really really didn't want to get out,yet it's proclaimed that the veracity of the described events must be questioned. That a Japanese history book series would not consider these things important enough to at least be taken up shows how denialism is inherent.

edit: I'd also like to point out that "spouts right wing nationalism" is an unfair rephrasing of what I said. I also dislike how you seem to be constantly taking the "side" of Japan instead of trying to maintain an awareness of the limited knowledge you hold. If you're going to pull similar moves to what you did previously in the thread or in the Wal-Mart thread, consider me bored. I don't know how the historical events and the laws and all relevant to the 尖閣諸島 work out in the end. But from looking up articles on it I've come to realize that it's much more complex than you, and some others, were making it out to be. I choose to not take any side on the matter and put it aside until I might feel inclined to become thoroughly informed. You choose to ignore the details and use simplification to back up your predetermined position.

Last edited by Surreal (2012 October 10, 1:52 am)

Still no World War 3 but nice to see that sometimes, actions have consequences. Actually, it's not nice for anyone but still, for every action, there is reaction:

Japan carmakers to cut China production by half: Nikkei

Sales have plunged at Japanese car makers since violent protests and calls for boycotts of Japanese products broke out across China in mid-September over the Japanese government's purchase of a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea from their private owner.

Toyota and Honda plan to cut China production to about half normal levels by shortening working hours and slowing down the speed of production lines, the Nikkei said without citing a source.

But the dramatic drop in demand for cars made by Japanese brands, which had a combined share of roughly a fifth of China's passenger car market in August before the protests, has been an unexpected boon for foreign rivals.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/ … 2P20121008

While Chinese citizens would be happy that Japanese companies are losing sales, remember that the companies are employing local Chinese labor so in the short term at least, the Chinese employees of Japanese companies would also be hurt financially.

It remains to be seen whether the foreign competitors can make up for the loss of income/business.

Surreal wrote:

It was re: nationalism. Elements that from an outside perspective would be usually considered "far-right nationalism" is vowen into the Japanese school curriculum and constitute some widely held beliefs. This is not so different from how stereotypes about and biases against the Arab world among other things are constantly being repeated in Western school books and media.

From what I understand though, which is admittedly not much, the Japanese text book "controversy" in general, seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. The so-called "far right wing textbooks" were like a tiny fraction of the total (I think it was less than 1%) indicating that most schools rejected it. There are things to criticize Japan for, including history whitewashing in textbooks, but again, this seems to be a mountain of a molehill situation.

Not to invoke the "tu qoque" response, but there's also 2 points to make:

1) Pretty much every country in the world whitewashes their history (to various degrees) and I would argue that Japan are in the lesser degrees, and:
2) China (or its citizens) are criticizing Japan for censorship in history textbooks. You know, THAT China, the country with censorship so great, they call it the "Great Firewall of China." It must be so easy to encourage Chinese citizens to direct any and all criticism (justified or not justified) when self-criticism is almost completely illegal (or at least, criticism aimed at one's own Government).

bebio wrote:

In the end, we just need peace, and we need both governments to stop fooling people and to fight back the rise of nationalist tendencies.

That is true. However, I would argue that although nationalism exists in all countries, because of Chinese society being the way it is (full of Government-enforced censorship and self-censorship in media and internet, one party political system that is allergic to criticism, etc), the rate of nationalism in one country is greater than the other, and therefore, if war should break out, then it should be questioned which country's nationalists had more of an influence.

Last edited by qwertyytrewq (2012 October 11, 11:30 am)

Surreal wrote:

qwertyytrewq wrote:

While Chinese citizens would be happy that Japanese companies are losing sales,

Stop doing that.

Stop doing what?  The protesters that were turning out in giant hordes would certainly be happy about it.  Heck, they were attacking everything in sight that had even the vaguest connection to Japan.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Surreal wrote:

Welcome to the blame game. Choose your category:
"Outgroup bias"
"Self-righteousness"
"How does one measure rate of nationalism? (Answer is subjective opinion twister special THEY are the PROBLEM and if they're not the whole problem they're the MAIN PROBLEM)"

The Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish whichever government can do lots of stupid shit and should be thoroughly judged for it. But in my opinion we have no reasonable framework to judge populations themselves that isn't totally pointless and doesn't essentially boil down to hating on whoever happens to be not us whenever applied. Well, the judging of governments often doesn't work out much better, but at least there are what seem to be fairly good frameworks for doing it.

I think everyone here are rational enough to realize that there is good in every country, and bad in every country. We're all good and we're all bad, from country, down to the individual.

However, the main point I would like to express is that I do not subscribe to the "same thing, both sides" school of thought, in regards to comparisons between countries. I believe there are "degrees" of goodness and degrees of badness. In my opinion, it is not enough to say "they do bad things, though to be fair, we do bad things too." I believe that there are some things are badder in certain countries.

For example, all countries have a record of treating non-human animals inhumanely. That is a plain indisputable fact. However on balance, some countries treat animals worse than others and on a greater scale, and to claim otherwise is to take the cowardly "middle of the fence" position and attempting to please both parties. In saying that, I hope that rational people can criticize other countries without the implication that one is defending one's own country at the same time. For rational people, every country is a target, including one's own. And some are bigger targets than others and rightly so.

In relation to my main point, in regards to nationalism, it is my opinion that certain countries have social environments that are more conducive to nationalism or nationalist tendencies. In other words, it is my belief that some countries have more fertile breeding grounds (so to speak) of nationalists. To name names, I believe that nationalism or nationalist tendencies exists in both China and Japan (and other countries), however I assert that China has the more "fertile breeding grounds" for nationalism compared to Japan. Factors contributing to this "nationalist breeding grounds" include things like state-enforced and self-enforced censorship in media and internet, lack of opposition political parties, selective remembrance of history (basically censorship again), and incarceration of those who criticize the single political party or those who discuss subjects which the party does not approve of.

That's a more reasonable opinion and quite a different point from "... if war should break out, then it should be questioned which country's nationalists had more of an influence.". There is no good way to judge the German people during WWII as a whole as 'worse' than other populations, or at least it hasn't been throughly shown by philosophers and other scholars that there is. There's no good framework for ratifying that kind of condemnation. It wasn't wrong to FEEL hate towards the German people of course, but that's different. If what you wrote now is what you actually meant all along though, alright.

kitakitsune wrote:

Japanese people do not like debating and arguing. It's a cultural thing.

I think this is further proof of my assertion. When Chinese nationalists trash their own infrastructure for the sake of nationalism, we aren't surprised that much. On the other hand, we would probably be very surprised if the "docile" Japanese people decide to do the same thing on a similar scale (attacking Japanese people for buying Chinese cars etc).

Not necessarily. Rich people generally resort to more subtle means of expressing nationalism/discrimination/hate in general really. Violent protests are more eye-catching but in Sweden for example, even though relatively few people commit hate crimes toward the Romani, they are still constantly looked down on and even refused to be allowed to hire cars among other things. 100 years ago in Sweden, when resources were much more scarce and violence was much more a part of the cultural, they'd be getting beaten up all the time. Just because the nationalism is expressed in a more salient way doesn't necessarily mean there's "more of the feelings of nationalism". Rate of violent outbursts is only one operationalisation of "rate of nationalism". Are you starting to see what I meant with something like rate of nationalism being nigh-impossible to "measure" (in a non-ambiguous, "definite" way at least)? And no I'm not going to claim the opposite, that nationalism is more "rampant" in Japan than in China, you're making a mistake when you think that a counter-argument to what you say must imply that.

JimmySeal wrote:

Surreal wrote:

Stop doing that.

Stop doing what?  The protesters that were turning out in giant hordes would certainly be happy about it.  Heck, they were attacking everything in sight that had even the vaguest connection to Japan.

I think Surreal thought that when I said "Chinese citizens", he thought that I was referring to the entirety of China, and not just the protesters.

Yeah. Generally, I don't generalize like that. If a bunch of Germans kill Muslims and then a thousand Muslims are killed in an earthquake, I don't go 'round saying "Gee I bet the Germans are happy now!". Who are you to decide that those protesters really represent what most Chinese citizens think? There have been signs all over the place that the Chinese government is manipulating things and the media always focuses on the extremists. Neither of us has any numbers on what percentage of the Chinese population actually feels such a strong dislike of Japan that they'd be ready to violently attack Japanese on their own.

Generally, the line between "Chinese government" and "Chinese people" are very fine, from the point of view of Chinese people. When we criticize the Chinese government, the people will get offended on behalf of the Chinese government or feel that they are being attacked personally. This is just another example of the side-effects of rampant nationalism.

I don't know how you got into this since it doesn't have much to do with what I said but whatever. I live in a building with almost only exchange students. A fair bunch of them are Chinese. One girl I've talked to who is my corridor neighbor is strongly pro-government, but many don't care for the government or are actively (to the extent that they can, of course) opposed to the government and think it's repressive. According to them, the great majority of all interactions between Japanese and Chinese in China go smoothly. This is partly because both sides either recognize that their governments are war-mongering pieces of shit that are so corrupted that most politicians care little for public interest, or they don't really care much for politics, they're just living their lives and see each other as individuals. The extremists you see on TV and on the internet, of both sides, are vocal minorities, and while some nationalist sentiments are widespread in both countries, the situations of every-day life are far from what you'd expect based on the pictures the media paints.

There was a good blog article describing this phenomenon but I can't remember where.

This is contrary to for example, America, which generally encourages non-Americans to be critical of America's government because the people see themselves as separate of the Government.

It was probably the usual quasi-psychology/politic sciences stuff with wild exaggerations. And Americans not reacting to non-Americans criticizing the American crusades? I'd wager it's easier to find Americans who will flip out if you say that America has no God damn right to be messing around in the Arab world, than a Chinese that will flip out if you say China has no right to be messing around with Tibet. That's just my point of view. It's not necessarily correct. What I want to say is that it's not such a given that Americans are totally cool with anti-American government sentiments. Even Swedes who usually are hating on the politics dawg often get really defensive when anyone from the outside criticizes certain Swedish policies. We could keep writing here a long time with you bringing up subjective views as near matters of fact and me pointing out that it actually has a lot to do with subjectivity, but I don't want to waste my time doing that. Unless you have solid data to base your views on, keep to scepticism instead of going with what "seems right" because it makes things easier. That's what I generally try to do, and that's not going to change.

And that's all I have to say, really. Thanks for the discussion but I'll opt out now because I don't think I'd gain much more from continuing it.

I know you said you won't be continuing but...

Surreal wrote:

Who are you to decide that those protesters really represent what most Chinese citizens think?

That's a big problem. Due to the aforementioned society that I spoke of (censorship, political correctness etc), we don't really know what Chinese people think. And even if they expressed what they thought, we don't know if they truly genuinely believed what they thought or whether they're just being paid to express those views (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party) or are socially pressured into expressing those views.

Using America as an example, if someone says "I hate America!", we can assume on good faith that he/she holds that opinion. Likewise, if he/she says "I love America!", we have no reason to believe otherwise. This is because in general (I repeat, in general), America supports, or at least, gives lip service to freedom of speech and this is reflected in the society and media. Contrarily, China may or may not support freedom of speech, but the lack of it is certainly evident in society (self-censorship) and media.

Another thing to note is that Americans, even though they may disagree with each other, almost always state that "(I) support freedom of speech." However, Chinese people like Jackie Chan state the opposite, that Chinese society SHOULDN'T get more freedom (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world … 71337.html).

So what do Chinese people think? Maybe in general, Chinese people aren't nationalistic at all, and those who are, are just in the minority. Or... maybe in general, China wants revenge on Japan, whether that's with blood or with money.

You may say that the nationalists are the minority. I might say that they're in the majority. At this point in time however, I argue that both are equally valid candidates for what Chinese people think.

Surreal wrote:

There have been signs all over the place that the Chinese government is manipulating things and the media always focuses on the extremists.

Here's an interesting link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/chi … story.html

And here's a summary of what I read from people who know more than me:

1) The Chinese government are world-leaders in suppressing protests and riots. They do it effectively, efficiently, and fast.
2) Chinese people organize Anti-Japan protests out of their own "free will", as seen recently.
3) The Chinese government covertly supports Anti-Japan protests because like in any other country, using foreigners as the evil bad guys is a good scapegoat and is a good distraction from problems created by locals.
4) The Chinese government is overtly against Anti-Japan protests because after all, they want to be seen to be good by the international community.
5) The Chinese government is VERY MUCH AGAINST Anti-Chinese government protests.
6) The fact that the bigger scale Anti-Chinese government protests were stopped earlier than smaller scale Anti-Japan protests is possible proof of everything above.

Honestly, at the moment, I don't know who is worse: The Chinese government or its people. As much as we don't like the Chinese government, sometimes they are more restrained and more mature than the people they govern. Maybe Jackie Chan had a point.

Surreal wrote:

Neither of us has any numbers on what percentage of the Chinese population actually feels such a strong dislike of Japan that they'd be ready to violently attack Japanese on their own.

Just to get a fair and balanced view, have nationalist Japanese protesters attacked Chinese people, Chinese buildings or Chinese products recently?

I live in a building with almost only exchange students. A fair bunch of them are Chinese. One girl I've talked to who is my corridor neighbor is strongly pro-government, but many don't care for the government or are actively (to the extent that they can, of course) opposed to the government and think it's repressive. According to them, the great majority of all interactions between Japanese and Chinese in China go smoothly. This is partly because both sides either recognize that their governments are war-mongering pieces of shit that are so corrupted that most politicians care little for public interest, or they don't really care much for politics, they're just living their lives and see each other as individuals. The extremists you see on TV and on the internet, of both sides, are vocal minorities, and while some nationalist sentiments are widespread in both countries, the situations of every-day life are far from what you'd expect based on the pictures the media paints.

It's interesting that you make that conclusion because I have read a lot of internet forum anecdotes of expatriates (foreigners living in China) where "Anti-Japan is the default viewpoint" is their conclusion after interaction with local Chinese. This also includes Chinese people in Western countries. Even a normally shy and quiet Chinese girlfriend may turn into a shrieking banshee when the topic of Japan comes up. That said, both of our anecdotes are just that, anecdotes.

It was probably the usual quasi-psychology/politic sciences stuff with wild exaggerations.

I mainly read from popular blogs like Peking Duck where the writers at least try to be objective and also has some experience (lives or lived in China before), and not the smaller Libertarian style fringe-view blogs with no comments from readers (because of the fringe).

Comparing Chinese people to Muslims again (sounds pretty sensationalist but bare with me), think of it this way. Remember the recent Mohammed/Anti-Islam video on YouTube?

The protesters live in a country where media and Government are inseparable. The Government own the media so anything they see or hear is the product of the Government. When the protesters learned of the YouTube video, their responses include making threats against the American/Western governments and trashing their embassies and hurting/killing innocent people while they're at it.

One problem: The anti-Islam YouTube video was made by a private individual or a group of individuals. The (our) Governments had nothing to do with it nor did they act to ban it because even they recognize that freedom of expression is relatively important to the people they govern. Unless you follow the conspiracy theory where the Government made the video, well then that's different.

However, there is no freedom of speech/expression in the protester's countries and because of the environment/society they lived in and the values/beliefs of this society held, they made the assumption that the YouTube video was a direct attack against them by the Western Government and not merely by a random private troll. After all, if the Government owns the media in their country, then that means Governments in other countries control their respective media.

Relating back to China, certain Chinese people, due to the environment they were brought up in, grow nationalist and cannot differentiate the two separate concepts of the "average person" and "Chinese government." Therefore, a criticism against their government is also a criticism against them, even if that was not your intention.

Anyway, the blog article explains the concept much better. I still can't find it though.

And Americans not reacting to non-Americans criticizing the American crusades? I'd wager it's easier to find Americans who will flip out if you say that America has no God damn right to be messing around in the Arab world, than a Chinese that will flip out if you say China has no right to be messing around with Tibet. That's just my point of view. It's not necessarily correct.

I'm talking about distribution of views though. I follow politics on the Internet and I see just as many Americans who are for Middle East intervention as there are against.

On the other hand, I have never seen a self-identified Chinese person say that China should or does not own Tibet, or should not intervene in it. Anyone who is pro-Tibet are Westerners (IE. Richard Gere, hipsters).

It would seem to me that the vast majority of Chinese people think that China owns Tibet. In fact, this view is so common that there is even a Orwell style mantra: "Tibet WAS,IS,and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China." Have fun with this link if you want to entertain yourself with the opinions Chinese people hold:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Tibet+WA … t+of+China

Notice how many of the links that show the mantra has no blank space after "was," and "is,". And that it's mainly the same words that are capitalized. This is proof that they're literally copy and pasting like zombies. They don't even have the self-respect to actually type it out on their own. Even patriotic Americans at least go into the effort of typing out "God Bless America" in various ways like "godbles murica", "GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!111" and "god bless usa".

Here's a RTK drinking game for anyone reading the thread: Take a shot every time you come across "Tibet WAS,IS,and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China." while browsing the internet.

Final Note: My post isn't an argument nor am I trying to prove other people wrong. I'm just stating my opinions and my experiences while traversing the internet.
Final Note 2: I am not necessarily pro-Japan nor being paid to post pro-Japan posts on the internet. I'd love to get paid for it though (pro or anti). I need money.
Final Note 3: I am not necessarily anti-China nor being paid to post anti-China posts on the internet. I'd love to get paid for it though (pro or anti). I need money.

imabi wrote:

I think it's a cultural reason why Japanese people aren't so aggressive in their opinion on the issue. However, there are plenty of protests and there are plenty of in-Japanese discussions about this issue. The problem is is that you need to know a bit of Japanese to even find these commentaries. News about any development in the controversy does make the top news.

It's easy to find online arguments but are there any recent protests that are actually physical though, or even physically destructive? Or if there's no recent ones, then the most recent one.

imabi wrote:

I agree with Surreal that I don't think that the very angry and violent actions of the Chinese protesters reflects the true beliefs and actions of most/average Chinese people. I tend to think like anything of that nature that they are a minority that truly thinks that way or are just being forced to act that way, given the track record China's government already has in that regard.

I think it's fair to say that the recent anti-Japan protests were actually started by Chinese people themselves (and not forced to by the Government). Once the protest got started, the Government of course encouraged it. Until it ended, then they discouraged it.

Last edited by qwertyytrewq (2012 October 14, 4:03 am)

To close the dispute once and for all, whether you are for the Japanese, Chinese or a neutral, this video must be watched >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK0dPy8L4OU

After watching, you can basically see, that Chinese government is hiding the truth from their own people and tell lies for their benefits. Even the Chinese admitted that those islands belonged to Japan back in 1953.
A newspaper written by a Chinese newspaper corporation, which back then was wholly government controlled, and back in 1953 had an article with a passage that read like this, "Ryukyu islands stretch from Kyushu to Taiwan and it consists of 7 islands. They are Senkaku, Sakishima, Daito, Okinawa, Tokara, Osumi islands."

Please don't waste your time trying to find what the truth is or if China has the right to own the island or Japan does, ITS JAPAN'S and even if Japan didn't want the island, they can't prove that it doesn't belong to them, because the proof evidently shows it's bloody Japanese island. So there you go.
END of F#$ing discussion

all this finger pointing to historical maps, treaties and whatever else by both parties seems like a pretty big waste of time. Because the other side can always just retrospectively claim the map was invalid or the treaty unfair and so on. International consensus also doesn't matter as long as some sides consider that consensus invalid.

If Japan want to maintain ownership, then Japan's government needs to send a clear statement by stationing some military forces at the island. Then the ball is put in china's court and they are the one's who have to make the decision (which would be universally condemned even my many chinese) whether or not to start a military conflict.