‘I’m Korean,’ says Japanese in China

“Could you fly over here and help me?” a Japanese friend who runs a sushi restaurant in Beijing cried out over the phone. “Anti-Japanese demonstrators are throwing stones at my restaurant and the Beijing police are ignoring the violent actions against Japanese enterprises in the city!”

“How can I help you?” I responded. “I want you to stand in front of my restaurant, not wearing your baseball cap, and let the mobs know it’s an old Korean joint. The mobs don’t attack Koreans but I can’t speak Korean,” he gasped.

It’s a thought but I doubted if the angry Chinese youngsters can tell Korean from Japanese if I stood between the red Japanese lanterns even if I removed my cap. “Well, I think I can do that but before I get there and do these things.”

I recommended; “Remove all Japanese lanterns and bamboo decorations and take the Japanese sushi signboard out and don’t do your silly nodding repeatedly to Chinese guests. I’ll design a new front and think of a new name that would still appeal your sushi bar but add Korean bibimbap in your menu.

“And learn just one sentence ‘I’m Korean’ in Korean.” He agreed to do so. Thinking of a new name that would appeal to Chinese as a Korean restaurant yet sells Japanese food, I reread The Korea Times publications with these captions “Anti-Japan protests swell, turn violent, the Japanese prime minister calls on China to ensure safety of Japanese citizens.” It’s dated Sept. 17, 2012.

It all began on Sept. 18, 1931. A small quantity of dynamite was secretly detonated by a Japanese soldier on the railroad built by Japan’s South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang, China) creating minor damage to wooden rail crossties.

The Imperial Japanese Army taking the chance accused Chinese dissidents and responded with a full invasion that eventually led to the occupation of the whole Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo. It was the first step for a long awaited invasion of the Chinese continent by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Chinese remember the Mukden Incident (Liutiaohu Incident in Chinese) as their National Humiliation Day. It had eventually become the detonating fuse, directly and indirectly, for the Pearl Harbor attack that further led to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, and a direct cause of the division of Korean peninsula and finally Japan’s defeat in 1945.

A 1987’s biopic “The Last Emperor” directed by Bernardo Bertolucci was about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China made with the backdrop of the Liutiaohu Incident. It was the first feature film for which the producers were authorized by the government of the People’s Republic of China to film in the Forbidden City in Beijing. The film won nine Academy Awards.

Around the period of the Pacific War, Far Eastern maps in Japanese history and geography text books had been painted red on the mainland and islands of Japan, Taiwan and entire Korean Peninsula. They first modestly applied pink on the continental Manchuria that Imperial Japan had just captured.

The history teacher emphasized that Manchuria too will become one of their tributary states just like Taiwan and Korea and the northeastern Chinese continent will be honored to be colored in red, soon. The Japanese’s dream of enlarging its territory since Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s era (1536–1598) was about to come true, so the black-rim spectacled Japanese teacher proudly told the class, and the students were delighted.

Are China and Japan on a collision course again? Hope not, but let’s compare the current military power of the two giants. The 2012 military whitepaper of Japan lists; Military budget: China $106,400 million, Japan $56,300 million. The force of arms: China 2,290,000, Japan 260,000 soldiers including U.S. Forces in Japan. Battle ships: China 1,088, Japan 143 vessels, etc.

If and when they really collide militarily, would the United States press Japan just like it did in the pre-World War II period or the other way around this time? How about North Korea? What about us South Koreans, should or shouldn’t do when history repeats?

In the meantime, my friend in Beijing would survive if he learns how to say, “hankook saram, hankook saram!”

The writer is a retired architect-specifications writer, who shuttles back and forth between Seoul and New Jersey. Email him at sangsonam@gmail.com. <The Korea Times/Nam Sang-so>

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