海外記事
| 日本人がまた中国でセックス波紋 中央日報 2003/10/31 日本人がまた中国で‘セックス波紋’を起こした。 １０月初めに約４００人の日本人が広東省珠海 で集団売春事件を起こしたのに続き、今回は山西省西安で日本人留学生らが中国人を性的に侮辱し、 大規模な反日デモを招いた。 事件の発端は２９日、西安・西北大学の外国語学院で開かれた新入生歓迎会。 日本・広島から来た一人の教員と３人の留学生が服を脱いで、中国人を‘変態’として描写したのだ。 これら日本人はブラジャーを着用したままズボンの中にコップを入れ、「これが醜い中国人だ」と叫んだと いう。 この事件が広く知れ渡ると、学生は翌日、大字報を張り出して日本人留学生の‘眼下無人’の行動を 叱責する一方、留学生寄宿舎を訪ねて公開謝罪を要求した。 午後には数千人の大学生が「日本帝国主義を打倒しよう」と叫びながら国歌を歌い、校内デモを行った。 一部は街頭デモまで行ったという。 Protests Over Japanese Student's Skit Newyork Times 2003/11/1 By Joseph Kahn (NYT) University students took to the streets in Xian for a second day, shouting anti-Japanese slogans and carrying banners, after some Japanese exchange students put on a risqu・skit before a student audience. The presentation was seen as innocent, if in poor taste, by some students and school administrators. But many students saw an insult to China. Joseph Kahn (NYT) Student prank that gave the Chinese a fit of the willies The Guardian 2003/11/1 Jonathan Watts in Beijing In the history of comical flops, few pranks can have gone down quite so badly as the fake-genital skit performed by three Japanese students in China's Northwest University. Camping it up in red bras and knickers bulging with paper cups, the performers must have been expecting guffaws or at least shy giggles from the freshmen and faculty they were entertaining at a welcoming party for new students. Instead, they sparked an anti-Japanese demonstration by thousands of fellow students, internet death threats, and articles in the national media accusing them of attempting to humiliate China and its people. The outcry sparked by the innocuous display of student humour this week is the latest and most bizarre in a series of public demonstrations against anything Japanese - one of the few issues on which the Chinese government appears ready to tolerate large-scale protests. According to the state-run news service Xinhua, the performance at the party for foreign language students in Xian, western China, included three Japanese students and a teacher wearing brassieres and false genitals made from paper cups hanging from their waists. They danced "obscenely" and threw scraps of paper pulled from their underwear at the audience. The audience of conservative students and professors called a stop to the high jinks. If the performers had been Chinese, Russian or European, that would probably have been the end of the matter. But the fact that they were Japanese turned a cultural misunderstanding into an international incident. Several thousand Chinese students gathered in front of the university's foreign students' dormitory on Thursday to demand that the Japanese offenders apologise. Yesterday hundreds continued to protest, shouting anti-Japanese slogans and waving banners, according to witnesses. After the performance was given prominent coverage in the media, internet chatrooms filled with calls for the culprits to be deported. Anti-Japanese feeling has lingered since the second world war, when Japanese troops used Chinese civilians as sex slaves and guinea pigs for biological experiments. But its expression has undergone a change recently, with calls for financial compensation. In recent months the fury has grown in the wake of the death of a labourer who was killed by a Japanese chemical weapon uncovered at a construction site. Hundreds of thousands signed an online petition against a Japanese bid to build a rail link between Shanghai and Beijing; a Japanese band was pelted with bottles when it played in Beijing; and newspapers published front-page stories about a sex tour by 400 Japanese men who allegedly hired 500 Chinese prostitutes. 中国沸き立つ反日感情｢石原知事発言｣に激怒 中央日報 2003/11/03 日本の右派知識人である石原慎太郎東京都知事が、過去の歴史や中国の有人宇宙船打ち上げについて 行った最近の発言を受け、中国内の反日感情が高まっている。また陝西省西安市の西北大学で起こった 日本人の醜態などが起こり、反日感情が大きく沸き立っている。 今年９月の日本人観光客が行った集団売春や、８月に起こった旧日本軍が残した化学弾爆発事件 などが 覚めやらぬ状況でこれらのことが起こり、中国人を刺激している。このため、北京−上海高速鉄道事業 で新幹線の採択に反対する世論が、インターネットを中心に広範に起こっている。 日本の読売新聞が妄筆 中央日報 2003/11/04 日本人留学生と教員が中国人を侮辱した醜態については、中国外務省が「日本政府は、留学生の教育 をきちんとするように」と批判する場面も見られた。また「これを機に、日本に目に物見せてやるべきだ」 という主張も広がっている 日本の読売新聞が、中国西安市で日本人留学生らが行った寸劇をきっかけに起きた反日デモを報道し 、留学生らの反省よりも中国当局の対応を非難することに焦点を置いた。 同紙は中国報道関係者を引用し「寸劇が大規模デモにつながった理由について、 単なる反日感情だけでは説明できない」とし「当局の言論統制のためねつ造された噂が広まり、デモ隊を 刺激した」と主張した。 同紙はデモに参加したある中国人学生の話として「事件翌日の先月３０日『日本人が中国人を侮辱 した』として学校当局に調査を要求したが、学校当局が沈黙したため、これに我慢できなかったデモ隊が 日本人寄宿舎を奇襲し、大規模な反日暴力デモにつながった」と主張した。 また「逮捕されたデモ隊のうち５２人が一般市民だったという点は、深刻な貧富の格差に不満を 抱いた市民がデモに便乗してうっ憤を晴らした可能性がある」と分析した。 記事はしかし、留学生の パフォーマンス自体に対する反省には一切触れなかった。 Pride and Prejudice Time Asia 2003/11/10 (November 17, 2003 / Vol. 162 No. 19） A college skit enrages Chinese students, causing anti-Japanese rioting BY SUSAN JAKES | XI'AN The third annual cross-cultural performance night at Northwest University in Xi'an was meant to showcase the international flavor of the school's language institute. Such talent shows at Chinese universities generally cleave to conventions: skits are formal, easy to understand and never bawdy. But when three Japanese students and a Japanese teacher took the stage they had something a little more racy in mind. The teacher held a female mannequin in his hand. "This is my
girlfriend," he said. "She's too fat, and she ought to go on a diet." Then the
three students, who wore cardboard boxes on their heads inscribed with words
like "sushi" and "ninja," cast off overcoats to reveal they were wearing red
brassieres, with paper cups protruding suggestively from between their legs.
They began to dance, gyrating their hips in a manner that "for Chinese was just
nauseating," said one spectator. After three minutes university authorities
frantically motioned for the organizers to close the curtains. The Japanese
contingent had certainly performed in bad taste; but had it been their intention
to offend their Chinese hosts? More than five decades have passed since the end of Japan's occupation of China. Chinese middle-school students may now groove along to Japanese pop songs, but wartime atrocities are still drummed into their heads in heavy-handed textbooks. Students are encouraged to remember Japan's unwillingness to apologize candidly for its wartime behavior. Little wonder that Li Li, a 21-year-old history student at Northwest who did not see the Japanese skit, said she felt that "clearly the offense was deliberate. They designed it to insult the audience. No one, including the dancers themselves, could have found the skit funny." The Xi'an riots provide only the most recent evidence of the hostility and distrust some Chinese still harbor toward their neighbors to the East. In September, Chinese Internet chat rooms were inflamed over an orgy involving 500 Chinese prostitutes and 400 Japanese businessmen reported by state press to have taken place in the southern city of Zhuhai. Many Chinese assumed the businessmen were not merely indulging in vice, but had held the orgy as a premeditated slur. The campus violence appears to have been tinged with a peculiar admixture of nationalist pride and developing-nation shame. Chinese students at Northwest live eight to a room in nonair-conditioned dorms. Their foreign classmates are sequestered in far cushier private digs with hot showers. Chinese students described their Japanese peers as aloof, but none interviewed by TIME had ever talked with one. "I see them in the cafeteria," says an economics student. "They always wipe their tables after they eat. Chinese don't do that so I think they must look down on us." The Japanese dancers, who are already back in Japan, have offered a written apology. Japanese diplomat Norio Saito says the four hope to return to China soon. When they do, they may want to keep their sense of humor to themselves. With reporting by Huang Yong/Xi'an and Michiko Toyama/Tokyo
Looking at the picture of Chinese students demonstrating in Xi'an last week, a half-forgotten literary reference came to mind. I went to my books and found the reference. It's in Chapter Eight of Ba Jin's novel The Family, written around 1930. Ba Jin (old spelling: Pa Chin**) was the most prominent Chinese novelist of the Republican period (1912-49) and The Family is a pretty standard "set book" for foreign students of Chinese. It is about a young man from a prosperous family, living in west China in the 1920s. At one point the young man, whose name is Juehui, joins a student demonstration against some misbehavior by the local warlord's soldiers. It is evening, and starting to rain. Thousands of young protesters are jammed into the square in front of the warlord's main administrative building. Some student delegates have just been admitted to the building. Juehui applauded frantically with the rest of the crowd. His hair was wet from the raindrops that fell unceasingly. From time to time he shaded his eyes with his hand, but he still could not see the facial expressions of the students at each side of him. He could make out the bayonets of the soldiers, and the lanterns by the entrance to the warlord's building. He could see the numberless mass of bobbing black-haired heads in the square. Unable to control his indignation, all he could think of was to let out a great shout, yet he could barely breathe. There had long been rumors that the authorities intended to deal with the students, but this attack had been so sudden. Who could have thought things would happen this way? It was all too contemptible! "Why do you treat us like this? Do you mean to say that patriotism is now a crime? That the purity and sincerity of our youth is a disaster for the nation?" He could not believe it... That bobbing mass of black-haired young heads was a recurring theme throughout China's history in the 20th century. Now here they are again, angry, choking with indignation, massed in a square, eyes fixed on the doorway of some official. Why do you treat us like this? The occasion of this particular protest, in the northwestern city of Xi'an last week, was a light-hearted stage revue put on by foreign students at the city's big university. According to "the account I got from a friend who was present, the Chinese students in the audience got riled up over an accidental juxtaposition of Chinese characters in a sketch put on by four Japanese students. At 3 P.M. the Japanese students asked us to meet with them. They are four very sad, humiliated and apologetic youngsters. They never meant any harm, but I would say their understanding of the deep-seated hatred the Chinese have towards them is not fully understood. They explained their skit. On the back of their T shirts, one had the words for "Japan," one had "China" and the middle shirt had a heart and in it the word "love." They also had borrowed bras from the girls and wore them over their T shirts. On their heads they had some kind of paper hats with the names of some famous Chinese and Japanese people. Unfortunately, on the back of the head of the guy who had China on his back, there was the character for "look," so from the back of his head he had "look," then on his back down to his rear, he had China! Soooo, it appeared to be: "Look down on China!!" Dynamite!! The heart and love seemed unimportant after that. This, at any rate, was the spark that ignited the protest. Aggravating factors, according to various news sources, were: A three-day orgy this July at a hotel in south China by 280 employees of a Japanese company, who were serviced by hundreds of local Chinese prostitutes. The orgy coincided with the anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, when the Japanese began all-out war against China. The recent accidental unearthing of some WWII-era Japanese chemical weapons in Manchuria, causing the death of a construction worker and the injury of many others. A Japanese attempt to outbid China on supplies of natural gas from a Russian site in Siberia. Frustration at an arrogant, overbearing university administration, and a dearth of local jobs for graduating students. Demonstrating students filled with indignation at real or imagined insults to their country ? especially by the Japanese ? and at their own dismal life prospects, have been a feature of Chinese life for close to 100 years now. The best-known of recent times were of course the Tiananmen Square protestors of June 1989, but the tradition goes all the way back to the May Fourth Movement of 1919, when Chinese territory was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Versailles, and the students of Beijing came out in protest. The particular frustrations on display at any one demonstration are drawn from a small, constant set: misgovernment, corruption, the arrogance of the authorities, poor living conditions, insults by foreigners. The last is especially potent. Young Chinese people are easily roused to fury by anything they perceive as a slight against the national honor. Here is a story from my own last visit to the country two years ago. I took my family to see the Buried Army" of the first emperor, not far from this same city of Xi'an. I stood in line to buy tickets. Just as I reached the ticket window, two young Chinese boys, aged around 13 or 14, ran up, pushed in front of me, and got the attention of the ticket seller. Though annoyed, I let them get their tickets; then, when they had done and were standing their chortling over their coup, I pushed one of them aside rather rudely, and said (in Chinese): "Don't you have any manners?" At once the person behind me, a young Chinese man, began shouting in a mix of Chinese and broken English. I didn't get all of it, but it was filthy stuff ? the lowest kinds of obscenities, including some really bad English ones he had got from somewhere. When I turned to look at him, I could see that he was utterly out of control. He was insulting me in the crudest way, with fierce passion, his arms flapping like a penguin's. His face was bright red with anger. Chinese people standing around clicked their tongues at him and told him to shut up, but he just kept right on, the abuse gushing out of him. I suppose I should have knocked him down; but I was temporarily unmanned by the knowledge that I had done a wrong thing in shoving the boy (who was at least a foot shorter than myself). By the time I got my wits together, some security people were advancing symmetrically from the corners of the ticket plaza, and the ticket seller was yelling back at the guy from her window. Everyone was mad with him for "insulting a foreign guest." I slunk away, guiltily aware that the opening insult, though trivial, had been mine. Yet still, on an action-reaction calculation, the young man's rage was wildly out of proportion to my offense. This is one of those stories that, when I tell them, prompt people to bring out similar ones from their own Chinese experiences. This passionate rage against any slightest, even imaginary, assault on the national honor, is quite normal in China. If the offender is Japanese, it comes out triple force. If I myself had been Japanese, and a head shorter, at the Buried Army ticket plaza that day, I think it is quite likely the young man would have tried to throttle me. The striking thing here is the persistence of these kinds of attitudes, their constancy across the whole modern era. China today is, as everyone knows, vastly improved from her condition 100, or 50, or even 10 years ago; yet somewhere in China, now as then, is a "numberless mass of bobbing black-haired heads" in some square, filled with rage at the crimes of foreigners, or the corruption of their own rulers, or both. China seems to me a very sad place. If she were a normal country, under constitutional government, China could lead the world. She has an energetic and talented population, with a higher average intelligence than any Western nation and a long, strong tradition of intellectual endeavor. If she could let go of her non-Chinese colonies (Tibet, East Turkestan), she would have a homogeneous population without any of the distractions caused by fractious minorities. With the Confucian ethic of family solidarity still more or less intact, she could run a welfare state much smaller and cheaper than those required in individualistic countries like the U.S.A. Having almost no "installed base" of 19th-century technology, she could carry out infrastructure planning and development from scratch, using modern materials and techniques. China could quite easily be a paradise on earth. Instead, poor China is stuck in some horrible time warp. Unable to let go of her 19th-century imperial acquisitions, she garrisons vast territories populated by resentful non-Chinese peoples. Her national psyche poisoned by the humiliations of 70, 100, or 150 years ago, she snarls and spits at those who should be her natural friends and trading partners, and amasses armaments whose only purpose can be, or at any rate is, to fill her neighbors with fear and mistrust. Cumbered with a stupid, reactionary and corrupt ruling class, her people cannot make their voices heard. Instead of striding forward into the bright future that should rightly be theirs, they seethe, and burn, and from time to time boil over. Why do you treat us like this? Poor China; poor, poor China. ------------- ** Incredibly, Ba Jin is still alive, though only just. He will be celebrating his 99th birthday on the 25th of this month, from his hospital bed in Shanghai. "Ba Jin," by the way, is a nom de plume. In his youth, the author was much taken with the doctrines of the Russian anarchists Bakunin and Kropotkin ? "Ba-ku-ning" and "Ke-lu-pao-te-jin" in standard Chinese transliteration. He took the first Japan's war past sparks Chinese rage TOKYO AND BEIJING - To Japanese exchange students in central China it was just a silly skit. But their Chinese classmates took offense - and took their anger to the streets for two days in the city of Xian, sparking riots and mob attacks on Japanese students and restaurants, a very rare outburst. The incident raises an old but persistent popular animosity between Asia's main giants as well as the reticence by Japan to confront the roots of Chinese feelings. Indeed, armed with new rationales about its wartime actions, and with a budding nationalist vernacular, Japan may be further than ever from closing the gap with China over World War II grievances that remain alive more than 50 years later, analysts say. The little-reported drama began on Oct. 30 at Northwest University when the exchange students, in a fraternity-style joke, wore red bras over T-shirts and a cup over their crotches while dancing to hip-hop music. At this point the facts become blurry, but offense was taken. An ill wind rapidly gusted into a major storm in Chinese student Internet groups and in Xian, where about 50 Chinese, backed by a thousand angry onlookers, entered a foreigners' dormitory the next day, knocked on doors asking for student nationality, then beat up two Japanese, one a female. On Nov. 1, several thousand Chinese flooded the main avenue of the city, challenging local police over their protection of 42 Japanese students who were removed to a hotel; Japanese restaurants were trashed, and an apology demanded for the skit. While many registered disappointment at their students, Japanese in Tokyo were shocked by the Chinese virulence. From Day 1, and as passions flared, Japanese media were under pressure to explain the Chinese anger in Xian. Many causes were given by Tokyo media and TV talk shows: A bad economy in Xian. "Cultural differences." A recent scandal involving 240 Japanese businessmen and 500 prostitutes in Zhuhai. Anger at the Chinese government that was directed through the Japanese. Chinese pique at Japan's effort to make North Korean kidnap victims an international issue. "The Skit Incident Proves the Effect of Anti-Japanese Education," blared Shincho Weekly, a popular Tokyo magazine with more than a million circulation. "This overreaction [is due] to the consistent anti-Japanese education in China since the end of World War II," the article quoted a Chinese journalist as saying. All these factors were present, but the one cause that did not make headlines or talk shows in Japan was the issue that Chinese students themselves consistently described as the No. 1 reason for unhappiness: Japanese unwillingness to own up to the past. Many Chinese believe that Japanese do not see the war as wrong, but as a mistake - a distinction quite different in their moral calculus. Rao Zhishan, a student on a an Internet group, put out a seven-point manifesto on why Chinese students were upset, starting with "Japan's efforts to erase history," and moving to Japan's lack of internal education about the war, compared with that undertaken by Germany. Animosity between China and Japan is as complicated as the histories between the sides. The Chinese government does use the anti-Japanese war, as it is called, as a propaganda tool to unify the country, experts acknowledge, and as leverage against Japan. Yet Japan's inability to admit wrongdoing gives Beijing the stick it wields, they add. For younger Chinese, it is not the war itself, but a feeling that Japan has never shown proper remorse, that festers. In the wake of the Xian incident, for example, China Youth Daily this week published an online survey of 1,827 students showing that 83 percent felt negatively about Japanese "reluctance" to admit to war crimes in China. The issue was Japan's refusal to use the term "compensation" - in payment to the victims of mustard-gas canisters unearthed in Heilongjiang Province this summer. The canisters were buried by departing Japanese troops in 1945; one Chinese was killed and nearly a dozen harmed when they were dug up. "It is too late in Japan to really confront the issues," argues Gerald Curtis of Columbia University. "You had to do that right after the war. This is a generation [in Japan] that no longer feels responsibility." Yet inside China, it seems, it is not too late to raisethe war issue. However politically skewed China's history teaching, most Chinese have been exposed to far more details and facts about World War II than Japanese - who come from a presumably open society. With standard Japanese history texts only offering two to three pages about the entire war, Japanese schools seem as diligent about not bringing up the facts of the war as Chinese schools are about raising them, experts say. "The Japanese try to hide the truth, but it is hard for the Chinese to forget," argues Zha Mei, a retired scholar from Shanghai. "The Japanese invasion is passed down to the younger generation inside families. There are so many individual cases; every family lost an uncle, a cousin, a daughter. With so many relatives killed by Japanese it is hard to forget. I will tell my son, and he is telling my grandson." China, for all its criticism of Japanese unwillingness to face history, has itself yet to face any number of unpleasant facts of recent history - the killing of intellectuals in the laate 1950s, mass starvation in the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution, the foray into Vietnam, and the Tiananmen Square massacre, to name a few, China scholars point out. And state media did not cover the Xian protests. Xian itself is a stronghold of ethnic Han national feeling. It is regarded as a center of ancient Chinese civilization. In June of 2001 several thousand Han students in Xian surrounded a dormitory of a half dozen Uigher Muslims, tossed rocks through the windows, and sang Chinese national songs until 2 a.m. There had been a fight between a Han and a Uigher student. The present time is an unusually sensitive moment in Chinese-Japanese relations. Chinese influence in the region is challenging Japan. Asian nations are asking whether the current taste of economic integration will develop into a formal regional identity. At the same time, nationalist feelings are rising in both Beijing and Tokyo in ways that would have been forbidden several years ago. The information revolution plays a role: When during the Japanese election the governor of Kanagawa Prefecture stated that all Chinese with student visas are "sneak thieves," Chinese students heard about it, and passed it around in ways that confirm their own prejudices. Ironically, popular suspicions and trash talking between China and Japan belie a new move in elite circles in the two nations to open channels of dialogue, cooperation, and even ways to deal with the past. Chinese envoy Dai Bingguo was in Tokyo Wednesday to confirm that six-party talks on North Korea will commence Dec. 10 in Beijing - a diplomatic process that is increasing Asian interaction. Sources say that Y. Nakasone, the venerable power broker in Japan, is openly speaking of offering Beijing a written explanation of why Japanese leaders visit the Yasakuni Shrine - something deeply hated in China. The letter would state that Prime Minister Koizumi is not honoring war criminals, but the average soldier who died. At the same time, there is a significant set of influential voices on the proud right in Japan that are articulating a whole new set of rationales about Japan's military rule in Asia that deflect criticism. Japanese, for example, are stung by comparison between themselves and Germany. Germans are famous for agonizing after the war about their collective crimes; Japanese did not do the same soul searching. But some Japanese historians now say that Japan's war history doesn't compare with the Nazi project to eradicate a race of people. In this new view, Japan may have been a harsh colonizer in Asia, but was not so different from other European colonizers like Britain and France in its behavior. Most Western historians and eyewitnesses disagree with this colonial comparison. But the rationale is gaining status in influential Japanese circles. A less scholarly argument now on offer is that the real project behind Japan's expansion was an attempt to rid Asia of white colonizers. That Japan pushed Europeans out of China, Southeast Asia, and Korea is something that Asian nations should appreciate, in this view. Scholars say that Japanese feel that should the 1935 to 1945 war-time period be publicly condemned, it would be a stain on the honor of those that died. "You can't apologize for a war without implying that those killed did something wrong," says Mr. Curtis. "In the US we criticized Vietnam, while honoring the soldiers. Japan isn't there yet." Japanese booted out of Chinese
university XIAN, China (Kyodo) - Three Japanese students and a Japanese teacher left for home from the central Chinese city of Xian on Nov. 3 after being expelled or dismissed from Northwest University for putting on a racy skit during a cultural festival the week before, sources said. They also said that among 43 Japanese students at the university, eight apart from the expelled three hope to return home, while another eight will transfer to other universities in the wake of protests over the "offensive" show. Two Japanese students were beaten up earlier by Chinese students who broke into a university dormitory for foreign students. The performance that caused the ruckus featured a skit, in which the expelled students and the teacher dressed in red brassieres and wore paper "genitals," that many of the Chinese in the audience found beyond the pale. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities punished 52 Chinese residents who took part in an illegal anti-Japan protest march following the show, the sources said. In Beijing, a Japanese Embassy official said the embassy will caution its citizens to be more careful and considerate tohead off more trouble over such incidents. It will publish an advisory on its Web site that Japanese learn to relate to Chinese better. Anti-Japanese anger in China has reached a new level over the past two months due to the mid-September Zhuhai incident involving 280 Japanese company employees on a junket and some 500 prostitutes, and this recent university performance. Shukan ST: Nov. 14, 2003
|