How China and Japan See Each Other

Over the past century the politics of East Asia have been influenced more profoundly by the Sino-Japanese relationship than by any other single factor. Because both the two present-day societies have roots in classical Chinese civilization-only a "heritage" for each today-Chinese and Japanese politicians before World War II often argued that there was a special binding relationship between them. Japan's written language and much of its religious, artistic and moral civilization derive from Chinese culture, while Japan was the primary influence both positively and negatively on whole generations of Chinese revolutionaries, some of whom are still alive and active today. Perhaps because of this common heritage of civilization and mutual influence, the enormous misunderstandings, wars, threats and depredations that have characterized Sino-Japanese relations for a century have tended to take on the ferocity of a family or civil feud. Even though well-educated Chinese and Japanese can learn each other's language rather easily, it is doubtful whether any two peoples in the twentieth century have approached each other with more profoundly misleading stereotypes.