ENTERTAINING SINO-JAPANESE PREJUDICES

China has seen a marked uptick in tensions with Japan since 2010, for which Japan's political shift to the right, nostalgia for wartime values, Yasukuni posturing, the blatant undoing of apologies and the unraveling of tacit mutual restraint in regards to territorial disputes are all fit to blame. China was the historic victim nation, so it is not surprising that Chinese television reportage has been hard on Japan. A certain degree of outrage and indignation would be understandable if it were just editorial viewpoints tinged with emotional overreaction,  but given the state-directed nature of media content, it also reeks of cold political calculation. Some political pundits have attributed the shocking anti-Japan street protests and intensity of China's media reaction to symbolic issues such as Yasukuni in part to the machinations of the now-disgraced security czar Zhou Yangkang, and the anti-Japan stance of the now diminished Jiang Zemin faction, which may turn out to be good news in the sense that bilateral relations would stand to improve with the passing of this clique from the scene.

In any case, doing TV in China is the art of the possible, and Chinese production companies have learned to navigate the course of least resistance by submitting proposals that can get past the censors and make money. The genre of Anti-Japan war films to be doubly attractive because anti-Japan product, inasmuch as it is in tune with official thinking of the day, is easy to greenlight for production and can be profitable from constant television replay in China's vast network of national and provincial TV stations where it reinforces state-sanctioned prejudices while entertaining. There's little evidence that reliving the war against Japan is foremost in the creative dreams of producers and directors anymore than there is documentary evidence that the masses crave yet more of this tired, cliche-ridden genre. But it finds a market nonetheless, as formulaic and predictable as the stylized cowboy and Indian productions from Hollywood's blinkered past.



Although the recent trend of kang-ri-ju shows signs of production overkill, with netizens and even some communist officials complaining about the gratuitous violence, ahistorical fantasies and in some cases sexual excess, it still dominates daytime drama viewing as a genre. A huge pool of product is out there, and more of the same is being produced. Not unlike the dilemma faced by Japan's film industry a few decades back when it turned to pornography to keep directors, editors, camera operators and sound recorders in business, the salacious genre of exposing Japan's crimes keeps production teams busy until better work comes along. The problem with the product is that it delves into sensitive historical issues and exploits them for entertainment value without offering a convincing story or context. The resultant dramas not only fail to educate or edify, but treat history frivolously, with commercial-driven carelessness, creating cardboard cut-out heroes and villains from central casting with a visual emphasis on sheer titillation. Unlike the turn to pornography and lasting embrace of the same by Japan's beleaguered film industry, China's turn to the business of packaging, selling and marketing of racial enmity is not just bad art, if it can be considered art at all, but contributes to real-life political tensions by priming the public to dislike Japan.

Punching out anti-Japan dramas in assembly line fashion is an opportunistic way to keep production companies solvent and actors acting, while filling airtime with a lowest common denominator product acceptable to government censors, hot-headed opinion leaders and a malleable portion of the general public. Informal talks with Chinese students, many of whom are quietly fond of Japan's "dongman" tradition (manga and anime) as well as Tokyo-style design, food and fashion, suggests that the Anti-Japan genre is missing the mark. For better or worse young people in China are not interested in raking over the coals of contested history but instead forward-looking to the future. "Boring"was the most common response I heard when asking about the Anti-Japan dramas on Chinese college campuses in the past few months, and to my surprise, some students claimed they didn't watch TV at all.  Instead they sate their media hunger on the internet, claiming that TV is mainly watched by "old people."



"Blue Wolf" is an ambitious, sweeping drama with a rich and varied cast of soldiers, guerillas, foreign officials and singsong girls. It covers the period from Japan's invasion of China below the Great Wall, the battle of Shanghai, the destruction of Nanjing and KMT flight up the Yangtse River to Wuhan and Chongqing, but despite the epic backdrop, it's a silly soap opera at heart.


The story quality and production values of kang-ri-ju vary wildly from drama to drama, but the Anti-Japan narrative share certain core elements. China is good, Japan is bad. Chinese extras play Japanese without great nuance, relying on cartoon villains that scowl and sneer, routinely insult dignity of women, exhibit stiff body language, grunting speech and villainous mustaches. A few words of Japanese are inserted into otherwise fluent Chinese speech to create the impression of Japanese being spoken. Dramas that aim for more linguistic verisimilitude offer a liberal sprinkling of spoken Japanese, some of it fluently, though not flawlessly, voiced by Chinese actors.

A common visual theme of Anti-Japan drama is dressing the set with the eye-catching rising sun flag and insignia. Unlike Germany, which changed it's flag after the war, Japan's continuous use of the hinomaru flag makes it possible for viewers of wartime dramas to conflate the enemy nation of the past with Japan of the present.