Japan’s Cartoon Network

Kenkanryu (The Hate Korea Wave)
By Sharin Yamano
289 pages, Tokyo: Shinyusha, 2005 (in Japanese)

When Japan’s public broadcasting network introduced a South Korean drama series called Winter Sonata on its satellite channel in 2003, an unexpected love affair with all things Korean soon followed. The Japanese and Korean governments had promoted cultural exchanges before the two countries hosted the World Cup in 2002. But it was the melodramatic soap opera — and not government policy — that inspired Japan’s Korea boom. Japanese entrepreneurs rushed to ride the Korea wave. The station aired the series a second time and later published books, produced DVDs and CDs, and sponsored concerts featuring Korean language, art, and music.

But not everyone has fallen in love with Korea. A young Japanese cartoonist named Sharin Yamano, eager to join the countermovement against the Korea boom, posted his anti-Korean cartoons on the Internet as the Korea wave took hold. His collection of cartoons was published last year as a manga (comic book) called Kenkanryu, whose vibrant characters and kid-friendly graphics belie the assuredly adult themes of war, nationalism, and foreign policy.

The title combines three Chinese characters: ken (hate), kan (Korea), and ryu (wave or boom). That leaves some ambiguity with respect to whether the author is inviting readers to hate the Korea boom or simply to hate Korea, but the text suggests both — with an emphasis on the latter. The Korean media instantly decried the book, but Japanese reviews were strangely balanced, which is to say they were imbalanced, given the book’s substance. Most Japanese reviews stopped short of condemning the author’s effort to distort history and incite anti-Korean sentiments. The right-leaning Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun, for example, lauded the book for its calm and balanced portrayal of Japanese-Korean issues. And even the left-leaning Asahi Shimbun deflected blame from the young author to Japanese society as a whole. The book quickly spawned its own mini-boom, selling more than 300,000 copies in the first three months after its release.

The book opens with a Japanese high school boy, Kaname, learning from a friend that the Koreans only made it to the final four in the 2002 World Cup because they cheated. Then Kaname’s grandfather explains to him that the Japanese who occupied Korea, including the grandfather himself, were sincerely committed to modernizing the country. Kaname is puzzled, for he knows that his grandfather would never lie, and yet his grandfather’s account contradicts the media’s often repeated stories of the Japanese military’s abuses during the occupation. In college, Kaname joins a study group and discovers the "truth" about Korea. He examines Korean demands for compensation and the Japanese apology for its past aggressions. Armed with a new sense of righteousness, Kaname proceeds to learn the facts about topics such as Korean appropriation of Japanese culture, media bias in Japan, and the territorial dispute over the Takeshima (Dokdo) Islands. The three cartoon frames on the cover capture the tone of the book: "We do not need to apologize or to compensate Korea anymore!!" declares Kaname. "Why did Korea invade the Takeshima Islands, which are Japanese territory?" asks his girlfriend. "Koreans claim that Japanese culture — samurai, kendo, sushi, tea ceremony, ninja, and origami — is Korean!!" charges a study group leader.

Kaname does confront alternative viewpoints along the way, largely thanks to his Korean-Japanese classmate, Koichi. Yet Yamano does not exactly stage a fair debate. For one thing, Kaname and his girlfriend, Itsumi, have "attractive" Caucasian features, whereas Koichi has narrow eyes and more distorted expressions. Moreover, Koichi’s case is inevitably refuted later on, and the anti-Korean characters — like the study group leader — always seem to get the last word. Such a skewed portrayal only seeks to distort the historical record in the name of revealing the "truth," and to revel in the sport of hating Koreans.

Luckily, Yamano’s manga — despite its resonance with some Japanese young people — is just that, a comic book. And a comic book that distorts history is a less serious matter than a government-sanctioned textbook that does so. The manga genre has reached the highest stage of evolution in Japan, with many serious volumes, including how-to books, guidebooks, and even academic works, being released in comic book form. Yamano is distinctive in that he managed to leverage the Internet to rise from obscurity to celebrity overnight. For all his popularity, however, Yamano’s influence remains constrained by the limitations of manga as a medium for serious debate. His work resonates with certain young people who are frustrated with Japan’s position in the world, but it is unlikely to generate new ultranationalists from scratch.

In fact, Yamano and company’s anti-Korea boom has hardly displaced the original pro-Korea boom. They may be able to pique the curiosity of some comic book lovers and Net surfers, but they cannot stop Japanese housewives from pining for Korean soap opera stars. In fact, Japanese public opinion remains favorable toward Korea. A Japanese Cabinet Office survey released in December reported that 51.1 percent of Japanese feel warmly toward Korea. In contrast, the share of Japanese who felt warmly toward China hit a record low of 32.4 percent in the latest survey.

It’s not that the mood of the Japanese public hasn’t played a significant role in Japan’s foreign policy on certain key issues, most notably relations with North Korea. For example, after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s first visit to North Korea in 2002, the Japanese media and public soon became obsessed with the fate of Japanese citizens who had been abducted by North Korean agents. That, in turn, hampered the Japanese government from playing a more constructive role on the critical issues in negotiations with the North Korean regime. Unfortunately, Koizumi’s likely successor, Shinzo Abe, learned precisely the wrong lesson from this episode. Abe emerged as a popular hero by taking a particularly hard line on the abductee issue, and he is expected to stick with this nationalist foreign-policy line if he becomes prime minister.

The question Japanese leaders must ask themselves is not whether the success of pop culture detritus such as this book will translate into political pressure on the Korea issue. After all, Japanese public opinion is sufficiently divided on foreign-policy issues — and foreign policy is sufficiently peripheral to electoral politics — that Japan’s political leaders still have ample leeway to move their relations with Korea and China in a more productive direction, if they have the wisdom and the courage to do so. What remains to be seen is whether they will continue to provoke their neighbors rather than seize the very real opportunity for better relations with Korea. If so, we certainly cannot blame one misguided cartoonist or the bored Japanese youth who enjoy his work.