Leo Ching has provided us with a welcome addition to the academic studies that focus on the ongoing tensions in East Asia relating to Japan’s imperial past and the legacy of conflict in the region. His key theme is anti-Japanism (in China and South Korea) contrasted with its constitutive Other pro-Japanism in Taiwan, arguing that anti-Japanism in East Asia is “the failure of decolonisation [and] … a manifestation of the changing geopolitical configuration of the region under the demands and strains of global capitalism” (3). The failure of decolonization itself is seen as a result of the post-Cold War context of American hegemony and a Japanese failure of de-imperialization (8). The anti-Japanism and pro-Japanism that has ensued represents the shifting of power relations in East Asia in the post-Cold War era today (15).
What Ching’s book does to set it apart from what is a fairly crowded field is to situate his analysis across the disciplinary boundaries of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and the burgeoning studies of affect and emotions. His case studies draw on a wide range of well-chosen cultural representations including film, literature, documentaries, and social media. In this way he offers a fresh and nuanced look at the complexities of anti- (and pro-) Japanese sentiments which so often dominate the political, social, and cultural agendas in the region.
The introduction charts the evolution of anti-Japanism in East Asia from its earliest manifestation in Korea and Taiwan in the late 1940s, through Hong Kong in the 1970s, to Chinese and South Korean protests over disputed islands and comfort women in the last decade or so. It also highlights the pro-Japanism in evidence in Taiwan, not just amongst the younger generation with their infatuation for Japanese popular culture, but also amongst the older dōsan generation, many of whom harbour a strong nostalgia for Japan. It then sets out the conceptual framework describing four distinctive attributes of anti-Japanism and pro-Japanism as narratives, performative acts, sentiments, and temporary fixes, which together allow for a range of positions on Japan. Thus, Ching notes that anti-Japanism is not static and while the form might be similar, “the content is often directed at local and present concerns that may or may not have anything to do with Japan” (14).
The chapters that follow consider different aspects of anti- and pro-Japanism starting with an analysis of the anti-American film Gojira and Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury in chapter 1, which serves to demonstrate the failure of decolonization in early postwar East Asia. Chapter 2 considers the uses of the term Riben guizi, or “Japanese devils,” in Chinese popular culture, arguing that use of the term “performs an affective politics of recognition stemming from an ineluctable trauma of imperialist violence” (38). Chapter 3 is a careful study of the sentiment of shame about sexual violence in the context of South Korean “comfort women,” analyzed through Byun Young-Joo’s documentary trilogy. Moving on to Taiwan, chapter 4 explores the theme of nostalgia among the older generation of Taiwanese by analyzing recent Nihonjinron-style writings, while chapter 5 takes a different tack and considers representations of love, or rather the “political concept of love” (100) through an analysis of four films (Gojira, Death by Hanging, Mohist Attack, and My Own Breathing) which Ching argues “offer glimpses of possibility for transnational and sub-national intimacies and affective belonging that transcend love of the nation and love of the same” (18). Chapter 6 develops the argument about the potential for a different type of reconciliation: “reconciliation otherwise” (120). Using the novel Exceedingly Barbaric and the documentary film Finding Sayun, which offer different perspectives on two key historical events in Taiwan (the 1930 Musha Rebellion and the story of the Bell of Sayun), Ching outlines the possibilities of a non-state, transnational, inter-generational reconciliation. This point is further explored in the epilogue, which discusses the student-led protests in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan of 2014 and 2015. Ching suggests that these new movements “have the potential to forge transnational and regional political initiatives that can contribute to inter-Asian dialogue and activism” (133) through their shared characteristics, such as the importance of popular culture as a “common grammar,” concerns about the rise of China and the “general sense of precarity among young people in the region” (133).
Each chapter is carefully argued and the analysis is rigorous. I agree with the author that state-level reconciliation has fallen short, and that there is the “possibility of reconciliation without state intervention” (129)—indeed there were signs of this in the 1990s. But the reality of the situation at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century—with heightened tensions over the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea and limited prospects of a deeper rapprochement between China and Japan—seems to have mitigated against substantive progress in that regard. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book and deserves to be read widely, not only by undergraduate and postgraduate students of the region, but by general readers looking for a perceptive and accessible insight into an important, timely, but complex topic.
University of Leeds, Leeds