Doraemon is evil!

[Fleur]

So say a few state-run newspapers in China!

Here's a somewhat funny/weirdly depressing story to digest today.

Anyone here familiar with the Doraemon cartoon? He's a giant, plump blue feline who has a seemingly bottomless front pouch housing a vast array of fantastical gadgets, who lives in the house of a schoolchild, and delivers entertaining moral stories to children of East Asia everywhere! And now he has a 3D CG film that will surely be a handsome box office success.

And a few Chinese newspapers seem to cry that the cat has pissed into their cereal this morning, because DAMN THOSE NEFARIOUS JAPANESE! Doraemon is not some loveable cartoon series for all children to enjoy! It is actually a conspiracy to not only export more evil Japanese culture around the region, but it's also a tool used by that evil Tokyo government to cover up - dun, dun, dun - Japanese war crimes in the Second World War.

That's right! All along this pudgy demon spawn has been teaching not morals, but he's been brainwashing our children into forgetting that the Nanjing atrocities ever happened, that pleasure women were ever a thing, and that Japan might have been murderous imperialists! Soon our children will dump history altogether and never know that Japan did any bad stuff!

“We have to be clear about the strong political meaning behind [the cartoon], the Chengdu Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper in the capital of Sichuan province, warned on Thursday. The Chengdu Evening Post and the Chengdu Business Daily ran similar commentaries on Wednesday.

“Doraemon is a part of Japan’s efforts of exporting its national values and achieving its cultural strategy; this is an undisputed fact. Taking this to heart, we should be less blind and keep a cool head while kissing the cheeks of the chubby blue guy,” the newspaper said.

The Chengdu newspaper said consumers of Japanese pop culture should “be clear about the murky nature of Japanese culture and never forget history”.

Has this worked? As East Asia stands precariously at the mercy of deep nationalism, has this alarming warning signalled by these few Chinese newspapers resonated well with the Chinese people? Is the Japanese embassy now under siege? Are massive rallies against the fat cat and other corrupting Japanese stuff like Pokemon being staged in major cities as we speak? Is it Kristallnacht for any poor cinemas daring to play the film? Is the military about to shoot on sight anyone suspected of being a Doraemon sympathiser?

Not really. Though folks in China are hardly about to sing the praises of the rightwing nationalist Japanese government in power at the moment, there's not really a similar aversion to Japanese products and pop culture (at least not since the last Diaoyu/Senkaku island affair). Japan is even the most desired holiday destination for wealthy Chinese travellers.

Reactions on social media indicate that many disagreed with the paper’s reasoning.“Dear government, be assured that we won’t be fooled,” one microblogger wrote.

“The world adults live in is just too frightening,” another one wrote with sarcasm.

Ah, the newspapers are actually being met with a considerable torrent of ridicule. But having said that however, years of fearmongering have been potent enough to lead to this:

A survey conducted earlier this year indicated that 53.4 per cent of Chinese expect a military confrontation with Japan, while 29 per cent of Japanese expect war with China.

See, kids. Isn't it sad that nationalism reaches such a fever pitch point that some people are willing to utterly abandon rationality and "argue" things with little to no logical connection and causation? Isn't it great that even the most innocent things can be construed as a conspiracy by the enemy? Isn't it great that fun cannot be had and that we must always project such things like this 24/7? Isn't it great that The Onion didn't have to write this?

South China Morning Post (subscription wall applies)

 

[Reverse Vampire]

*triple facepalm*
Sure, Doraemon is huge in East Asia from where I come from, and it's only now the Chinese paper think that Doraemon is the devil? I wonder if whether they have enough time in their hands to write such head-banging article in the first place. Now that I come to think of it, I really need to share this article to my friends to see how they respond to this.

 

[Crystal Power]

What is wrong with these... SMH!


You see this is why we can't have nice things!?

 

[Kaii]

That's actually really funny, because Doraemon was on TV alll the time in Hong Kong when I was a kid and they still have a lot of Doraemon-based ads on TV-B. I understand the broader motivation to ban Japanese cultural imports, but targeting a random, innocuous cartoon doesn't make any sense.

 

[Fleur]

That's actually really funny, because Doraemon was on TV alll the time in Hong Kong when I was a kid and they still have a lot of Doraemon-based ads on TV-B. I understand the broader motivation to ban Japanese cultural imports, but targeting a random, innocuous cartoon doesn't make any sense.

Hong Kong and mainland China are socially two very different entities if you look at them - the former wouldn't have anywhere near as much of a problem with Doraemon or any kind of Japanese cultural imports, as they don't quite have that xenophobic nationalism you'd expect the mainland to have. In fact, mainland residents don't have much of an aversion to Japanese cultural imports either. It's only the case when a very loud and tiny minority within the PRC tells them that they should have a problem with them.

 

[Kaii]

It's only the case when a very loud and tiny minority within the PRC tells them that they should have a problem with them.

Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head. Only a small minority have a problem with Doraemon and specific Japanese culture imports.

BUT, that said, there are still a lot of Chinese people (both in the mainland and elsewhere) who are still affected by the events of WWII and who still hold resentment toward Japan. I remember trying to take Japanese classes in high school and my family reacting negatively. For some WWII survivors/descendants of survivors, it feels like young people turning their back on Chinese culture and embracing a foreign culture with whom China has a complicated and painful history. There's two sorts of explanations for why there's been a revival of this "Never forget" mentality. The first seems to be nationalistic: Japanese culture is so hip and trendy that most young Chinese people watch anime and play JRPGs instead of watching Chinese cartoons or playing CRPGs, and that's a problem. The second is historical: We are importing culture from a country without examining the historical roots of that import. Some people even want to take that second reason a step further. Some argue that China (and Korea and other affected nations) should boycott Japanese culture because of WWII atrocities. Others think that these countries should boycott Japanese culture not because of the atrocities themselves but because of how Japan has acted since then -- either because Japan has not issued a sufficient formal apology or because some Japanese textbooks still don't fully address their role in the Sino-Chinese war.

tl;dr: Whether or not those are legitimate criticisms, much less legitimate reasons to hate on a country's cultural imports, there is still a LOT of tension in Chinese and Japanese relations. Are there still hard feelings about WWII among the Chinese people? Yeah. Could the PRC be using anti-Japanese sentiment to further nationalism? Maybe. Is a minority of Chinese press being crazy about this Doraemon thing? Definitely. Is it coming far out of left-field? Not entirely.