50th anniversary of normalisation of diplomatic relations between China and Japan: ‘Devil specialists’ and China-Japan relations in the eyes of Chinese in Japan – BBC News 中文

He said that he was used to being called “devil”, but he was still unhappy in his heart. “I don’t care if the Chinese say I’m a ‘ghost’, that’s because they have naive brains, and we don’t use insulting words to call Chinese people. At the filming site, the low-level ones will say ‘you devil soldiers’, but the high-level ones will The director will say ‘you Japanese soldiers’, and the older the director, the less respectful people will be.”

Miura Kenichi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1963. He was not an actor from a scientific class. He went to Beijing in 1997 for academic purposes. He studied for a doctorate in international relations at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. showbiz.

He remembered that when he first arrived in China, Sino-Japanese relations had passed the honeymoon period of the 1980s, but they were still very friendly. “.

Miura Kenichi made his first “anti-Japanese film” in 2000, and played the role of Japanese spy Lin Kuan Chongwen in “My Mother Zhao Yiman”. In the play, he was electrocuted when the heroine was interrogated. He said that he was in a very conflicted mood at the time. Being tortured in the electric chair, I already felt very disturbed when I saw the script, it was so cruel, I couldn’t stand it even if I played it myself!”

Under mental pressure, he asked Japanese professional actors for advice. The other party said that there are good people and bad people everywhere, especially in wars, good people will become bad people in bad environments. The words of the senior made him determined to play the villain role well.

He told BBC Chinese: “In the past, the Japanese officers in the anti-Japanese films were played by old Chinese actors, and their brains were washed. The Japanese are bad guys, their expressions and actions are very stereotyped, and they don’t care about the characters’ stories. But I He will dig out the background and historical materials of the characters, where he grew up and what school he attended. Through my performance, the audience sees three-dimensional, humanized, and more realistic characters. He also has contradictions and has his cruel reasons, such as soldiers who violated military orders. I will die myself, sometimes I have to kill myself.”

Miura Kenichi said that in the past 20 years, he has performed in the spirit of “China-Japan friendship” and did not mind acting as a bad guy, except for two themes: “Nanjing Massacre” and “Unit 731”. “These two things are too political, the Japanese only have bad guys. Recently, a director called me three or four times and asked me to play ‘731 Unit’, and I refused. The point of war films is to make people reflect on history, What’s the point if it’s just increasing hatred?”

He pointed out that the Chinese people’s impression of Japan remained before the war, but in fact Japan became a peaceful country after its defeat in the war, and the mainstream of Japanese society was very anti-war. “In normal countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, soldiers are respected, but in Japan, everyone thinks that the Self-Defense Forces are all bad people, and the people of the Self-Defense Forces will feel embarrassed.”

On the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, he described it as the “worst” time for relations between the two countries, and he was particularly tired of irrational nationalism. “Every country often fights wars. Human history is like that. It is wrong and unfair to look at the past from the perspective of the present. Japan is a peaceful country, and bad things are left to the past. People look forward and move forward. , but the Chinese always remember bad things to hate.”

In 1945, Japan announced its surrender, the Sino-Japanese War ended, and China and Japan established diplomatic relations on September 29, 1972. The two countries experienced a honeymoon period in the 1980s and 1990s. Both the official and the public were quite friendly. The Senkaku Islands) conflict over territorial sovereignty and historical issues. In 2010, a Chinese fishing boat collided with a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat in the waters off the Diaoyu Islands. In 2012, the Democratic Party of Japan government promoted the “nationalization” of the Diaoyu Islands, triggering large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. Relations between the two countries have hit rock bottom.

In 2012, when Xi Jinping assumed the presidency and Shinzo Abe returned to power, Abe’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and offering sacrifices triggered a strong backlash from the Chinese side. The ice was broken after the meeting between the two heads of state in 2014, and the uncertainty of the US-Japan alliance was increased after Trump took office in 2017. Abe once actively improved relations with China, but after Biden took office, he re-consolidated relations with allies, and Beijing Dissatisfied with Abe’s intention to amend the constitution, and Tokyo criticized China’s attitude towards Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan issues, the relationship between the two sides has fallen into a cold period under the general pattern of the “new cold war” between China and the United States.

In recent years, the Japanese national disaster has caused many Chinese people to gloat over the misfortune. In the 2011 “March 11th Earthquake” and the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, a large number of “celebration” messages appeared on Chinese social platforms, with some netizens referring to “retribution for Japan’s invasion of China”. After the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, Chinese merchants also launched promotional activities.

On the other hand, Japanese people’s perception of China is getting worse and worse. According to a poll released by the Pew Research Center in June this year, 68% of people in 19 developed economies around the world hold a negative view of China, with Japan having the highest 87%. A survey by a Japanese think tank found that only 6.1% of Japanese were satisfied with Sino-Japanese relations.

The Sino-Japanese relationship has directly affected the 660,000 Chinese people in Japan. Mr. Gao, a 50-year-old Sichuan native who lives in Nagoya and has two children with his Chinese wife, said that school bullying in Japan is very serious, and he is worried that his children will be ostracized by classmates because of their Chinese status. He was very active when his children were in elementary school. Participate in parent-child activities at school to integrate, but it is very difficult after middle school. He said half-jokingly: “So I let them practice karate from a young age, and they can pay back for anything.”

He went to Kyoto 24 years ago to study for a master’s and a doctorate, studying ancient Chinese literature, and after graduation, he joined a large Japanese company. He said that based on his identification with Chinese culture and nationality, he is still a permanent resident and has never been naturalized in Japan. “If I naturalized early, I should have been promoted to section chief now, but I didn’t. If it was an American passport or a German passport, I would have no hesitation, but I always have a psychological resistance to Japanese history, and I am very entangled.”

Mr. Gao emphasized that as a Chinese in Japan, he has never encountered unpleasant things in real life. “Japanese people are very high-quality, polite on the surface, and they never talk about politics.” However, he is particularly sensitive to the atmosphere of Sino-Japanese relations. If he just arrived in Japan as a benchmark of 100 points, after Japan announced the “nationalization” of the Diaoyu Islands in 2012, the relationship between the two countries plummeted to 80 points. Only 30 points, “the worst ever”.

He said: “In 2012, there were anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, but in 2015, many Chinese tourists came to Japan to buy them. Chinese people who have visited Japan will definitely have a good impression, because Japan is very clean, the Japanese dress well, and the girls are very beautiful. , the men are also handsome, polite and well-bred, so after 2015, the Chinese people’s impression of Japan has improved, but on the contrary, the Japanese people’s impression of China is getting worse.”

Lin Quanzhong, an international political scientist and an expert on cross-strait issues, pointed out that China has the ability to influence the atmosphere of the people towards Japan, but Japan does not, which has caused the people of the two countries to go further and further apart. “The Chinese government controls the media. If the official government sings well about Sino-Japanese relations, the public opinion will follow. But Japan is a democratic and free society. After 2012, the Japanese have always disliked China. No matter how the Japanese government showed goodwill to China, It is also powerless to suppress the voices and public pressure of dissatisfaction with China in Japan.”

The Japanese have a bad impression of China, and Mr. Gao blamed the media. He said that the Japanese media has negative news about China almost every day, and his most profound is the 2011 Wenzhou high-speed train accident. At that time, the Japanese media reported day after day that the Japanese felt unbelievable that the Chinese authorities had acted hastily. “The 10% of China’s negativity becomes 90% when concentrated, and the Japanese feel the 90%. In fact, those are all facts and indeed exist, but the virtual image of China makes the Japanese think that China is all negative and keeps getting bigger.”

He pointed out that the Chinese government not only did not try to improve the situation, but also continuously confirmed this negative image with practical actions in recent years, such as launching the “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy”, human rights issues in Xinjiang, Hong Kong demonstrations, Taiwan Navy exercises, and the “clearing of the iron fist” during the epidemic. policy” and so on, all made the Japanese very disgusted, “You can’t say that he is smearing China, because the facts are there.”

He specifically mentioned that Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019 had a great impact on Japanese society. At that time, all TV stations reported in detail, and after the implementation of the “National Security Law” in Hong Kong, a special series was also produced to focus on the damage to Hong Kong’s freedom. “In the 1980s, the Japanese often traveled to Hong Kong, and they also liked Hong Kong’s pop songs and movies. They have a special affection for Hong Kong. Things in Hong Kong made them very unhappy.”

On the other hand, the economic strength gap between the two countries also affects the Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations. Mr. Gao remembers that when he first arrived in Japan in 1998, the economic bubble had burst, but wages in Japan were still 30 times lower than in China. One day’s work in Japan was equal to one month’s wages in China. Many Chinese went to Japan to study and work, and some engaged in criminal activities. . “In the news, there are often reports of Chinese people stealing vegetables, robbing, picking up Japanese phone cards and selling them. The Chinese are the bottom of society, equivalent to the Vietnamese in Japan now. At that time, Japan didn’t take China seriously at all. poor developing countries.”

2010 was a turning point. For the first time, China’s economic aggregate surpassed Japan’s and became the world‘s second largest economy. This was the first time in 42 years that Japan lost its status as the world‘s second largest economy, and Sino-Japanese relations have undergone structural changes since then. “The Japanese were shocked. Originally a poor country and a little guy that they looked down on, they suddenly turned into a giant next to them. They felt a sense of fear and felt that China had blocked their own sunshine.”

However, in terms of soft power, Mr. Gao believes that China is still 30 years behind Japan. He went back to China this summer for three months. He personally experienced the iron-fisted “clearing policy” and tested nucleic acids every day. He was forced to quarantine for more than ten days and restricted his freedom of movement. Later, after expressing his dissatisfaction on the Internet, the authorities forcibly deleted photos from his mobile phone.

He said that these encounters were “simply abuse”, and his insistence on not being naturalized for more than 20 years began to waver. “If you don’t have a Chinese passport, you don’t have to be bound by Chinese laws and are under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government. I am now seriously considering changing to a Japanese passport.” .

Japanese actor Miura Kenichi in Beijing also said that China’s soft power still has a long way to go. “Japan went from being very poor to inventing the Walkman and rice cooker by itself, and slowly came along, but China has not gone through this process, and suddenly can enjoy a lot of things. The Chinese are rich in material, but lack in spirit.”

The information asymmetry between China and Japan has led to growing differences between the two sides. “Chinese and Japanese have different ideas about life and history. Why do we need a VPN to understand things outside? There are too few objective materials and information received in China, and there is no way to see things more openly and fairly. I think Chinese people look down on Chinese people. If they believe in their own children, they will definitely send them abroad to study. If they believe in Chinese people, they should be more liberal.”

Neither of them are optimistic about the future direction of Sino-Japanese relations. Mr. Gao believes that if there is a conflict between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait, and the United States fails, Japan is likely to submit to China’s sphere of influence. “In conflict, it’s not about culture, it’s about power. Rude and savage people use weapons against civilized and educated people, and the former will definitely win. There is no way.”

Miura Kenichi also believes that it is difficult for the two countries to improve relations if the current Chinese rulers do not change the “wolf warrior” approach. But as an actor, he believes more in the stories between people. “National leaders often change, but people-to-people exchanges will not stop. Like many Japanese friends who open ramen shops in China, these can promote friendship.”

He said that he does not plan to leave China in the short term, and is preparing to perform a film about desert greening, which is one of the few films in which he can play a decent role. “This planet is so small, and human beings are fighting endlessly. We shouldn’t go back to the era of wars 100 or 500 years ago. My dream is to make a film in which China and Japan work together to solve the problem of the earth.”