Japan and China: How Different They Are!
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Japan and China: How Different They Are! by Kase Hideaki and Sekihei Hei Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact ⓒ ii Copyright ©2012 by Kase Hideaki and Sekihei Hei Originally published as Tettei kaimei! Koko made chigau Nihon to Chūgoku by Jiyūsha, Tokyo, Japan 2010. English language copyright ©2013 by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. All rights reserved, including the rights of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Japanese and Chinese personal names have been rendered surname first, in accordance with Japanese and Chinese custom. The hanyu pinyin Romanization system has been used to translate Chinese personal and place names, with the exception of Wade-Giles translations that are still in common use (e.g., Yangtze River, Chiang Kai-shek). iii iv — Contents — Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Recognizable Differences in Cuisine ................................................................................. 3 • China: devoted to food .............................................................................................................. 3 • A Madman’s Diary and “I beg you to consume me” ....................................................... 4 • Food is a religion to the Han people .................................................................................... 6 • A first impression of Communist China was that of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ................................................................................................................. 7 • Mao Zedong didn’t read Marx? .............................................................................................. 8 • Downtown ramen is preferred to fancy, traditional Japanese dining ................. 10 • The Japanese who have become “I ate it all up” people ............................................ 11 • Shintō is pure water; Daoism is pig’s foot soup ........................................................... 12 Chapter Two: The Native Japanese Language Breathed a New Life into Kanji ...................... 15 • A new understanding of BC and AD .................................................................................. 15 • Kanji is the devil’s script ....................................................................................................... 16 • It shouldn’t be “hànzì” — it should be “qínzì” ............................................................... 17 • Rubi are teachers standing off to the side ...................................................................... 18 • Kana that are like a clear brook ......................................................................................... 19 • Japan rejected eunuchs and foot-binding ....................................................................... 20 • Viagra and “mistresses” at the graves of one’s ancestors ........................................ 22 • “Wedding certificates” for a Korean star at mother’s grave ................................... 24 • The hidden aim behind “simplified characters” .......................................................... 24 • It was “pressure scrolls” and “calamitous officials” that hindered China’s growth ...................................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter Three: Sentiment-Sharing Japanese Poetry and Narcissistic Chinese Poetry ......... 29 • Chinese poetry — nothing but personal experiences ............................................... 29 • Waka and haiku — loving communal experiences ..................................................... 30 • The Chinese who don’t get drunk and the Japanese who act as if they are ...... 31 • People of like minds: Chinese and American disputes .............................................. 33 • The envoys to the Tang who didn’t bring back sheep or pigs ................................ 33 • The dragon’s talons are one toe short ............................................................................. 35 • Korean anti-Japanese sentiment is karmic .................................................................... 36 • The Chinese emperor and the Communist Party both make everything of value in the land their own ................................................................................................ 37 • Japan, where the emperor and the people are one .................................................... 39 • Chinese language, which didn’t borrow from Japanese and isn’t practical ...... 40 • Below the emperor were only servants (the bureaucracy) and slaves v (the people) ............................................................................................................................ 41 Chapter Four: The Japan that Has “Public” and the China that Has Nothing but “Personal” ............................................................................................................................. 43 • Japan puts the “public” ahead of the “personal” .......................................................... 43 • Chinese “loyalty” is not “public”; it is for the imperial family ................................ 43 • Confucius encouraged lies and disregarded the public ............................................ 44 • If Confucius were reborn in Japan, he would love it .................................................. 45 • The 17-Article Constitution was the world’s first democratic constitution ..... 47 • China is “a large plate with a mountain of sand on it” and Japan is “small pebbles growing to make a great rock” ....................................................................... 48 • The fiction that the “Chinese race” doesn’t understand the world’s sensibilities ............................................................................................................................ 49 • Americans have never ever understood China ............................................................ 51 • The great military power of a Confucian China is more terrifying than that of Nazi Germany ................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter Five: The Chinese Illusion that They Can Make Every Country in the World Theirs ....................................................................................................................... 55 • China had no name until the Treaty of Nanking .......................................................... 55 • Shōtoku Taishi’s brilliant achievement rejected China’s “you’re either Chinese or you’re a barbarian” system ....................................................................... 57 • China’s “fight and kill” is man’s logic; Japan’s “enfold them gently” is woman’s logic ........................................................................................................................ 58 • In Japan, it’s not “right and wrong” — evaluation is based on beauty and gentleness ............................................................................................................................... 60 • The Beijing Cuisine People’s Republic and the Peking duck flag .......................... 61 • Countries with the word “People’s” in their names are no good .......................... 62 • Skill at wining and dining: tactics or art? ....................................................................... 63 • The ridiculous efforts of Mao suits, commander-in-chief uniforms, stand-up collars, and jumpers ............................................................................................................ 64 • China doesn’t have a single museum of Western art ................................................. 66 • The artistic sensibilities of a samurai who traded a castle for a single tea bowl ................................................................................................................................... 68 Chapter Six: While the People Starved to Death, Mao Held Nightly Jazz Parties ............... 71 • The Chinese and Korean ruling classes hated manual labor .................................. 71 • “Chairman Mao” is Hong Xiuquan reborn ...................................................................... 73 • The Asahi Shinbun headline as Mao died: “A Great Star Falls” ............................... 74 • Belief in the UN began with a Ministry of Foreign Affairs mistranslation ......... 75 • Beautiful confections were born out of the freedom of Japanese women ......... 77 • Confucius ate human flesh in a paste every day .......................................................... 78 • A father’s gift of an English dictionary and a massive kanji dictionary .............. 79 • Laozi’s “small country, small population” and his diametrical opposite: the Chinese Communist Party ......................................................................................... 81 • A Lao-Zhuang parable: “the fat boar” ............................................................................... 82 vi Chapter Seven: A Spiritual Culture Cannot Grow under an Overly Brutal Government ...... 85 • “Wisdom and self-preservation” camouflages self-interest .................................... 85 • Japanese leaders who were deceived by “In spring nights I sleep past daybreak” ...............................................................................................................................