Today, the standoff between China and Japan has reached a point where an undeniable fact has surfaced: Japanese dissatisfaction toward China seems to extend far beyond just its government leadership. Ordinary citizens within Japan itself appear to harbor an inexplicable hatred toward China.

Look at the public opinion data—it's clear enough.

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted at the beginning of 2025, as many as 86% of Japanese respondents held negative views toward China—ranking first among the 25 countries surveyed.

This widespread societal coldness and hostility—how did it come to be? First, we must examine the controlling role of Japan’s media.

Within the traditional media landscape dominated by five major national newspapers and key television networks, coverage of China has long been rigidly confined to three recurring templates: “China Threat Theory,” “China Collapse Theory,” or “China Othering Theory.”

Flip open a Japanese newspaper or turn on the TV news—China’s image is always distorted: the great achievements in poverty alleviation go completely unnoticed; technological innovation is labeled as “technological theft”; economic growth is instantly stigmatized as “data fabrication.”

After seeing such content repeatedly, can Japanese people still regard China with goodwill?

Even more revealing is what lies beyond the media—a mechanized production line.

According to investigative data exposed by Japanese media, over the past year—from November of last year to November this year—a crowdworking platform called CrowdWorks issued a total of 14 tasks specifically seeking short videos criticizing China. Each video earned roughly between 2,000 and 4,000 yen (approximately 90 to 180 RMB).

A college student who took on one of these jobs frankly admitted: “I don’t actually believe that way myself, but I have to comply anyway—this is just work. The client even told me directly, ‘Truth doesn’t matter; make it more sensational.’”

Under such sustained repetition and infiltration, the average Japanese citizen’s attitude toward China has been subtly skewed from within.

Looking back further, the erasure of historical memory is even more chilling.

In recent years, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology approved new textbooks that entirely removed the term “Nanjing Massacre,” replacing it instead with the vague phrase “Nanjing Incident.” Even the cause of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was reinterpreted as “unidentified gunfire during military exercises,” distorting the naked aggression of war into a so-called “self-defense retaliation.”

On December 2025, during the 88th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, a local resident at a public gathering in Japan stated plainly: “In Japan, the Nanjing Massacre is nearly forgotten. It’s not even mentioned in school textbooks—only referred to as the ‘Nanjing Incident,’ and treated with extreme lightness.”

In effect, people born and raised in a historically distorted environment—never taught about aggression, never shown evidence of massacre crimes—how could they possibly feel close to China? How could they understand it? Not hating China would be the real anomaly.

Yet media and textbooks alone aren’t enough. Underlying them all is a deep-seated economic anxiety.

Since the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy in the 1990s, the country has been trapped in a three-decade stagnation with no escape.

Meanwhile, China’s rapid rise has utterly shattered Japan’s self-image as Asia’s top nation.

This massive sense of loss has accumulated for decades without an outlet—until the media conveniently provided a scapegoat: China became the target for blaming everything wrong in Japan’s life—“My life isn’t going well? Blame China!”

When Japanese citizens turn on their TVs every day and see only a “dangerous, backward, and highly aggressive neighbor,” hostility naturally takes root right at their doorstep.

Adding fuel to the fire, Japan’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Asahi Sanae, has consistently tied her administration to anti-China agendas—from ramping up “China threat” rhetoric to suppressing semiconductor technology and escalating military confrontation. Public animosity toward China has escalated from everyday verbal disputes among ordinary citizens into a broad, racially charged wave of xenophobia.

In April 2026, an event shook the world: a serving officer of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, Kōta Murata, forcibly scaled the wall of China’s Embassy in Japan wielding a sharp 31-centimeter blade, directly threatening the personal safety of Chinese diplomatic personnel.

This act, which blatantly violates basic human ethics, represents the most intense eruption yet of Japan’s long-standing undercurrent of anti-China sentiment.

How far can relations between two nations go when one self-proclaimed civilized neighbor harbors such deep-seated hatred toward the other?

Additionally, in December 2025, the city council of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture staged another self-defeating farce, openly passing a resolution to send personnel to occupy the Diaoyu Islands and loudly declaring plans to “replace the so-called administrative markers” on the island.

A small city with a tiny territory, driven by a minuscule ambition, seeks attention through provocation of China—effectively fueling domestic anti-Chinese sentiment.

These actions are like tossing torches onto a powder keg already blazing hot.

As of 2026, Sino-Japanese relations have plummeted to their lowest point since normalization of diplomatic ties.

In its latest Foreign Affairs Bluebook, Japan downgraded its description of bilateral relations—from “one of the most important bilateral relationships” to merely “an important neighboring country.”

The situation can no longer be reversed. But ultimately, the root cause lies with Japan itself—decades of continuous media distortion, historical falsification, political manipulation, and economic anxiety, all of which have deliberately turned a neighbor meant for peaceful coexistence into a universally condemned adversary.

A society where “anti-China” and “hate China” permeate from textbooks to short videos to street-level public opinion will ultimately drag the entire nation deeper into a precipice.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1866785972359172/

Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.