'Japanese Devils': The conditions and limits of anti-Japanism in China
The 2005 anti-Japan protests in China inaugurated a new era of Chinese popular nationalism with their pervasive visuality and virtuality. The outpouring of emotions in cityscapes and cyberspaces - anger, outrage, zealousness and even pleasure - requires us to take emotion, passion, hope or sheer delight seriously and to recognize the power of some of the more alarming forms of popular nationalist sentimentality. This chapter analyses one instance of Sino-Japanese relations: the epithet of 'riben guizi' or Japanese devils in Chinese popular culture in four historical moments: late-Sinocentric imperium, high imperialism, socialist nationalism and post-socialist globalization. I want to suggest that while this 'hate word' performs an affective politics of recognition stemming from an ineluctable trauma of imperialist violence, it ultimately fails in establishing a politics of reconciliation. I argue that anti-Japanism in China is less about Japan than China's own self-image mediated through its asymmetrical power relations with Japan throughout its modern history. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Duke Scholars
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- Sociology
- 4702 Cultural studies
- 4405 Gender studies
- 4401 Anthropology
- 2002 Cultural Studies
- 2001 Communication and Media Studies
- 1608 Sociology
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Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Sociology
- 4702 Cultural studies
- 4405 Gender studies
- 4401 Anthropology
- 2002 Cultural Studies
- 2001 Communication and Media Studies
- 1608 Sociology