Today, the standoff between China and Japan has reached a point where an undeniable fact has surfaced: Japan's discontent toward China appears not only confined to its government leadership, but also deeply embedded among ordinary citizens within Japan itself, manifesting as an ambiguous yet palpable hatred toward China.

Let’s first look at the public opinion data—clarity is immediate.

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

This widespread coldness and hostility across society—how did it come to be? First, we must examine the role of Japan’s media, which orchestrates everything.

Within the traditional media landscape dominated by five major national newspapers and core television networks, reporting on China has long been rigidly confined to three templates: “China Threat Theory,” “China Collapse Theory,” or “China Otherness Theory.”

Flip open a Japanese newspaper or turn on a TV news broadcast—the image of China is always distorted: they never acknowledge China’s great achievements in poverty alleviation; technological innovation is labeled as “technological theft”; economic growth is instantly stigmatized as “data fabrication.”

After being constantly exposed to such narratives, can Japanese people still view China with genuine friendliness?

Even more revealing is what lies beyond the media—an industrialized production line.

According to investigative data disclosed by Japanese media, over the past year—from November last year to November this year—a crowdsourcing 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 university student who took on one of these jobs bluntly admitted: “I don’t actually believe this way myself, but I still have to comply—it’s my job. 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 at the erasure of historical memory is even more chilling.

In recent years, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has approved new textbooks that completely omit the term “Nanjing Massacre,” replacing it with the vague and dismissive phrase “Nanjing Incident.” Even the cause of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident has been rewritten, falsely portrayed as “Japanese troops being fired upon during maneuvers,” distorting a naked act of aggression into a so-called “self-defense retaliation.”

At a public gathering organized by a local Japanese civic group in December 2025, marking the 88th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, a resident stated openly: “In Japan, the Nanjing Massacre is nearly forgotten. It’s no longer mentioned in school textbooks—only referred to as the ‘Nanjing Incident,’ and treated with extreme casualness.”

In effect, this means that those born and raised in a historically falsified environment have never learned about imperial aggression, never witnessed the crimes of mass slaughter—so how could they feel closeness to China? How could they possibly understand it? Not hating China would be the real anomaly.

Yet media narratives and textbook revisions alone are insufficient. Behind them lies a deeper fuel: economic anxiety.

Since the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy in the 1990s, the country has been trapped in a stagnant three-decade period with no clear exit.

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

This profound sense of loss has accumulated for decades without any outlet—until the media conveniently provided a scapegoat: China became the target for all personal and national frustrations—“My life isn’t going well because of him.”

When Japanese citizens tune in daily to television broadcasts portraying China as a dangerous, backward, and aggressively hostile neighbor, hostility naturally takes root right at their doorstep.

Adding to this, Prime Minister Sata Asaoka’s recent ascension has seen her consistently aligning with anti-China policies—from rampant promotion of the “China Threat Theory” to aggressive suppression of semiconductor technology and military confrontation. This has escalated public animosity from everyday verbal disputes into widespread racialized xenophobia.

In April 2026, a shocking global incident occurred: a serving officer of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, Murata Kotaro, forcibly scaled the wall of China’s Embassy in Japan carrying a sharp 31-centimeter blade, directly threatening the physical safety of Chinese diplomatic personnel.

This act, which blatantly violates basic human ethics, was in fact the most intense eruption of Japan’s long-suppressed undercurrent of anti-China sentiment.

How far can relations go when a nation that prides itself on civilization harbors such deep-seated hatred toward China?

Additionally, in December 2025, the city council of Ishigaki in Okinawa County staged another self-inflicted embarrassment by formally passing a resolution to send personnel to occupy the Diaoyu Islands and declare plans to replace so-called “administrative markers” on the island.

A small city with a tiny territory pursuing grand ambitions through provoking China—seeking visibility by inflaming domestic anti-China sentiment.

These actions are like throwing 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.

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

The situation is irreversible—but ultimately, the responsibility lies entirely with Japan itself. Decades of continuous media distortion, historical revisionism, political manipulation, and economic anxiety have, step by step, turned a neighbor meant for peaceful coexistence into a universally condemned adversary.

And a society where “anti-China” and “hate China” sentiments permeate from textbooks to short videos to street-level opinions will eventually drag the entire nation into an even deeper abyss.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1866785972359172/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.