Anti-Japan

the duality of “Japan” in postwar East Asia: Japan as former military violence and Japan as postwar economic and cultural desire. (2)

The disjuncture between political demand and cultural acceptance in the film’s anti-Japan sequence renders visible the definitive form of anti-Japanism in postwar Asia: it is a paradox that defies simple definition and that is simultaneously about and not about “Japan.” (2)

why do social anxieties and political concerns in postcolonial East Asia take the form of anti-Japanism? (2)

【Thesis statement】anti-Japanism in East Asia is a symptom of unsettled historical trauma of the Japanese empire and its legacy. Or, in short, it is the failure of decolonization, on the one hand and, on the other hand, also a manifestation of the changing geopolitical configuration of the region under the demands and strains of global capitalism. (2-3)

the increasing co- evalness among Asian youth and creating a transnational community of fandom that has the potential to transcend the parochialism and nationalism marred by previous generations’ personal and secondary experience of Japanese colonialism and imperialism. (6)

democracy and demilitarization replaced or hijacked the process of deimperialization in the former colonies, postwar settlement and nationalist recuperation replaced decolonization as a radical political and cultural process The lack of deimperialization of Japan and the decolonization of Japan’s former empire sowed the seeds of anti- Japanism in Asia that began to sprout in the early 1970s and continue to grow to this day. (8-9)

disjuncture or gap between the actually existing China and Japan’s idea of China points to the historical fact that Japan does not have a shared experience with the global south and that Japan’s conceptualization of Asia, which is vital in its modern/colonial self- definition, is utterly out of date. (11)