Anti-Japanese

The orchestration of nationalist feeling in China continues:

A massive anti-Japanese rally was due to take place in the Chinese capital Beijing today amid fears that it could turn violent.

In what could be the largest demonstration against Japan in recent years, organisers called for 20,000 “patriots” to protest against Japan’s “historical actions” – a reference to the invasion during the Second World War.

Meanwhile South Korea’s president Roh Moo-hyun stepped up his criticism of Japan’s failure to repent its past crimes, calling Japan a “misfortune” to the world (via The Marmot’s Hole):

“It is a grave global misfortune to coexist with a nation anxious to glorify its history of aggression and cruelty,” Roh said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German newspaper.

“The fundamental problem is that the Japanese are looking to distort and justify their past aggressions. They have occasionally apologized, but their latest behaviors invalidated those apologies.”

Repeated visits (by Japanese prime ministers) to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Class A Japanese war criminals, for instance, is a grave insult to both South Korea and China, Roh said.

“The Japanese attitude does not fit with mankind’s universal values,” said the president.

Which all ties in nicely with the constant stream of anti-Japanese sentiment pushed out by North Korea’s Central News Agency. For instance:

The U.S. and Japan are chiefly to blame for the moves to drive our nation into disasters of a war. “South Korea-U.S. cooperation” is not practical diplomacy but diplomacy inviting national ruin. In order to protect the life and dignity of the nation we should not cooperate with the U.S. but with our compatriots.
National cooperation alone is a practical way of checking Japan’s moves to revive militarism and removing the threat of a war.

How nice that there’s something they can all agree on.