The series revolves around an elderly protagonist who killed 3000 ‘enemies’ with his sword during WW2 and is given the chance to relive his youth in a fantasy world - links to events like the Rape of Nanking is pretty obvious and the author has been pretty active in Twitter promoting hate speech against other Asians in the past.
Apparently there are also thinly-veiled references to atrocities in the series itself that got glossed over during the book run (which the publisher just announced that they will stop publishing) but the upcoming Anime series put a lot international focus into the contents and there’s lot of people up in arms about it across Asia right now.
From what I’ve seen, it seems like lots of Asian countries are super xenophobic towards other Asian countries. Is that correct? Or maybe not xenophobic…more like they think they are inherently superior to other asians.
The Japanese definitely held these kinds of beliefs in the past, and the Chinese have similar beliefs. Not sure about other asian countries though. I know the Koreans have that weird concept of Han, where they seem to think they are the recipient of ass kicking throughout history.
I think you’re generally correct - there’s a tendacy to view race as a hierarchy with each country ranking differing from their neighbors :)
I guess to a certain extent it’s not all that different from the West but due to the concept of a middle-class being pretty new to most parts of Asia a good chunk of the citizenry have had few opportunities to really interact with people from outside their own country and view their neighbors as more different than similar
Having read the manga based on the novel, I can’t say I noticed any racism that made it stand out over the glut of ‘reborn in a fantasy world’ novels the scene seems to be inundated with recently. I personally feel it’s one of the better ones even, mainly because the protagonist is completely merciless rather than your standard ‘let’s all be friends!’ hero.
I think you are generally correct too, on the xenophobia as well as the superior view. This makes them no different than well most of the world really.
Probably correct from a Japanese perspective - some may swap the rankings of Koreans and Taiwanese and others would also call out Hong Kong seperately :)
I am Chinese and hispanic, and now American so I have a take on this. I think what differs is different cultures have a difference on what racist behavior is culturally acceptable… For example in Spain it is perfectly alright to do chinky eyes. They don’t view it as a big deal. In the US (new york) the political correctness means you aren’t supposed to say or do certain things, which they don’t.
For example it is perfectly alright for Hispanics to be very curious and ask all sorts of things like “do Chinese people really eat dogs?” I don’t know if I am just used to it. Just today on the street there was a mother consoling a crying baby. She did it by telling her to “watch the Chino” so he stopped crying for a bit. You get used to being viewed as a curiosity, it barely registers anymore. The really outrageous stuff, I won’t even write. It’s annoying thought. What, I’m a zoo animal? I try to figure out why it annoys me when they say “el Chino”. Literally it just means “the Chinese person”, but it’s really about the usage. It’s like saying, “Hey look at that Arab down there.” You see what I mean?
Anyway, in American culture I feel that sort of stuff is considered gauche, quaint, and you don’t do it. Kinda like an old lady referring to food as “oriental” and/or “ethnic.”
What bothers me about saying that all cultures are racist is how some people, and I’m not accusing anyone here of doing it, use this as an excuse for their own behavior. Everyone is a little bit racist but that doesn’t mean you should be a jerk. In fact, being aware of one’s innate unfair racism may be necessary to being a better person.
Not being racist comes from … being exposed to different people. Then you accept and learn that people are people and have individual variations that differ from physical phenotype expectations and cultural heritage.
I don’t talk about the war with my Japanese friends, it is just bad taste. Then again they are reasonable people and not… right-wing wackos that glorify past military achievements. Jingoism fucking sucks. People die in war. When there is war, people suffer.
So my reference was more like… Japan and China and Korea having issues with each other is not hugely different than say the US and Mexico with the added benefit that the three countries from Asia has recent wars whereas we do not. I think that’s a key piece more than anything else. It isn’t just Asian that’s a factor but… horrific wars between many of these countries.
So I watch anime and I read the Light Novel for this.
Nothing immediately jumped out as overly racist. If you’ve watched enough anime, you’ve long since realized that perceptions of racism are different in the USA and Asia. A lot of anime tends to portray other countries in a bad light and/or highly stereotyped. This is especially true of China and USA who are often the villains out of jealousy of Japan (a vast simplification and generalization of anime plots i admit). Anime in general seems to very often be HIGHLY about nationalism. There is even one anime which is all but a paid advertisement for the Japanese military.
The few Asian (as in living in parts of Asia) friends I have also tend to kind of reflect the anime i’ve seen and opinions in this thread. From my limited experience, it does seem a lot more common, and acceptable, to have feelings that would be deemed racist in the USA. As Ex-SWoo pointed out, there is a lot of talk of ranking immigrants from other Asian countries by their race. Certain races are seen as harder working and more trustworthy (the typical story).
Back to the anime though…
I do remember the back story of “Japanese soldier who killed 3,000 people with his sword” and didn’t immediately connect it to any specific event or massacre. Maybe i am forgetting clues that linked it more closely, but I just assumed that this is an anime and hearing overblown backstories about someone killing tens of thousands of soldiers in a modern war with a sword is not uncommon at all in a Japanese anime. I figured that the main character needed to be from modern’ish times to fit the genre, he needed to have killed a ton of people to fit the story and he needed to be a sword expert, also to fit the story.
For those who are curious, the Rape of Nanking is the term given to the destruction, looting, rape and execution of civilians after its capture by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1937. Iris Chang’s 1997 book is a fascinating read if you can stomach it… which isn’t easy. If you want the horror put in perspective, one of the historical “good guys” in this story was the local head of the Nazi party.
The sword thing is a common thread – the Japanese didn’t have enough food to feed the populace (swollen with refugees fleeing the fighting in the east) and their own troops, and they suspected that there were a large number of Chinese Army personnel hiding among the civilians. The Japanese needed to reduce the population, but they worried that they literally did not have enough bullets to do the job. So a very large number of the later executions were done by hand, often with officers’ swords. In Chang’s book she relates stories of the officers having to take “shifts” because their arms grew too weary from the beheadings.
There is also a contemporary report of a “contest” between two officers as to how many enemies they could kill with their swords… specifically who could make it to 100 first. The Tokyo newspaper article tries to make it sound like they were killing armed Chinese soldiers in combat, but the reality is that they were executing captured or surrendered Chinese POWs.
We’re talking about Japanese Media here though. You see swords EVERYWHERE. I’ve lost count of the number of Kendo students who got reincarnated in to a fantasy world.
Is it the combination of Swords and Japanese Soldier in WW2 that makes people assume the character is a reincarnated soldier guilty of war crimes? I am kind of getting the feeling that either people just aren’t used to common anime tropes or they are using something the author said/did outside the anime to justify their beliefs.
