Even Younger Chinese People Can Easily Believe Stereotypical Old Image Of Japan

Tommy Kono April 24, 2012

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One blogpost made by Chinese female blogger got a huge sensation in China, and small laughter saying “We’re fed up with this kind of racist shit…” in Japan. Don’t be upset, in online forums people are almost always harsh like this when it comes to topics involve nationalism. This is by far milder than usual their aggressive reactions.

From Record China.

On 22th Apr, China’s most famous high-school girl blogger 重慶葦子 aka 盧葦 wrote her blogpost titled “Travel in Japan” and it caught a big attention in Chinese online community.” Since she wrote “Japan wan’t so bad as I expected”, as usual of every countries’ online forums, there are tons of voices thwer at her swearing her as “traitor”.

“When I arrived at Narita airport, I felt like a yokel suddenly put in such a gorgeous place, but once I left the airport there’re no dazzling skyscrapers, but only small housings. I was like ‘Wow is this the world famous city Tokyo???’. Old buildings and chaotic power lines… It by no means stuck up to rising Shanghai.“

Small housings…. by the way on the average, Japanese housing is larger than British but people still get this perception since rows of housings from train window just look like toys. But when you stepped inside it’s felt as large as most of American housings. But the quality of housings are significantly different from area to area, so it can understandable to get wrong image.

‘Wow is this the world famous city Tokyo???… No Narita is middle of farmland

By no means stuck up to rising Shanghai…. If you talk about size Shanghai is actually smaller than Tokyo, in addition Tokyo is more deep and condensed. It’s true Shanghai is growing rapidly but it’s more like sprawling of high-rise building rather than city development.

“There’re so many cute and fashionable girls. In Disneyland I saw girls dressed in school uniforms or Anime-type Moe-fashion walking lively. 90% of them colored their hair and 99% of them wore make up. Their dazzlingly bright smiles are full of the healing power. If there weren’t these girls, Japan would be lifeless, wintry country, I guess.”

“My tour guide, a middle aged woman taught me about Japanese women. After marriage, most of them become housewife. Their husbands don’t come home until late at night, drinking outside. My literature teacher taught me ‘Mono no aware’ is synonym of Japan. As I watched in Japanese Drama, after they married, their life is just about dedicating to their husbands and children. (I bet you, she must have watched histrical Drama flmed in decades ago..)”

First of all “drinking outside” is pretty important in Japanese business society. It is done “for maintaining good relationship in business”. Roughly speaking, the better-paid company, the more you have to spare your time for this activities since you paid for your socialization skill, basically. Needless to say socialization includes every technical and management skills.

And for me, Japanese in his 20’s, I must make it clear that she is basically talking about our parents’ generation. Now without any kind of quarrel, most of married women are more or less independent regardless whether they are housewives or working in office.

“Wearing an apron, life is all about cleaning, washing and cooking… I can’t imagine to sacrifice myself to this point. Maybe because I’m too young to understand this. But for those women, ‘it is ok as long as he gives her living expenses.’ and as long as he does, she has to shut her eyes to whatever deeds he does. This story lingered in my heart. Japanese women is prey of man-dominated society… I feel bad for them.”

This sounds crazy…. Who in the world like this kind of life? and we have every right to speak up our rights. That said this kind of life is not as hard as it sounds . Life is more than repeating the daily routine. Her commentary sounds like Japanese women have no life. But whether she can enjoy social life or not is all up to her. And few people are like she said alienated from the society living life with hardly any interaction with outside world. Ultimately any society has people who have no life.

On top of that her depiction of Japanese women is what my mother describes “Japan USED to be like this, you are born in happy period.” This is a typical example why we have to be more serious about conveying real of Japan, since people still have this old image of 60’s to 80’s.

“Japanese music industry is huge and their willingness to buy records are very high, but it seems like Japanese too much prefer AKB48-like Loli-idols. It may be popular among plant-eating boyz, but female classmates in my school seem to never be interested in AKB-like girls saying ‘I don’t get it, how do you find them attractive?’ In Japan K-pop‘s presence is great. Compared to K-pop, C-pop is relatively unknown, but I hope stars like Leehom Wang will gain popularity in Japan like 東方神起 did in Japan.“

If you’re just looking at AKB, K-pop artists look not so successful in Japan, but you should note AKB is an exception. Under enormous anti-Korean sentiment in Japan, K-pop is actually enjoying their popularity pretty well. By the way Kan-ryo in Japan all started several years ago (back when I was in Japan) from “Winter-Sonata”, starring Bae Yong Joon. It got enormous popularity among mostly elder generations (decent number of yonger fans as well). The reason this Drama got so much popularity is it’s depiction of unsophisticated but honest and gentle character played by Yong-sama. Those Japanese never praised the quality of the Drama or story. What captivated their hearts was that characters in Drama was the reminiscent of sweet old days of them when things were slow, unsophisticated and not complicated and everyone dreamed about this type of pure love relationship. There’re literally no negative reactions to this Drama series, compared to today’s K-pop, which is full of information manipulation, that almost all “honest” media in Japan are bashing.
I like Leehom Wang by the way.

“I wrote a lot of things I saw and heard while in Japan, and titled it ‘High-School Girl’s Travel Diary in Japan’. I uploaded this onto multiple famous BBS. To avoid misunderstanding, I wrote in preface ‘Before I visited Japan, I only had the same image as most of Chinese people. I had historical education and saw a movie of Nanking Massacre… I also had a hatred feeling for former prime minister Koizume’s visit at Yasukuni shrine. But through this trip I came to have new view toward Japan.’“

According to the article, She wrote this 2 years ago, when K-pop was at it’s peak and right before AKB was going to dominate Japan’s music charts.

Overall (educated) Japanese comments can be summarized in this two sentence.