Hostile books fill shelves in Japan

Books and publications carrying disparaging content about South Korea and China have been growing in popularity in Japan to the point that some bookstores even have a dedicated corner for such xenophobic material.

But to fully understand the recent rise in this trend, beyond Japan's recent trials and tribulations with some of its closest neighbors over territorial and historical issues, anthropologists advocate looking at the situation from a historical and psychological perspective.

They note that Japan has always been a homogenous culture that largely isolated itself from the rest of the world until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

But in modern-day Japan, as the world's third-largest economy, Japan now "presents" itself on a global stage as a progressive country, committed to the ideals of internationalization, which in terms of Japanese history, create inherent ethnological conflicts resulting in a homogenous nation with a "dichotomous" personality.

The recent revival of jingoism, including the proliferation of bigoted literature in Japan in particular, can be understood from two perspectives according to some sociologists. These can be best described as "in group versus out group" cultural ideology, and an "elitist social hegemony".

"It wasn't until I'd lived overseas for some years that I could truly see Japan, my country, objectively and while I was shocked at first, it makes sense when you consider the idiosyncrasies, many of them engendered historically, that comprise the Japanese psyche," says Keiko Gono, a prominent Tokyo-based sociologist.

"I realized that Japan was obsessively group culture-oriented, meaning that if you weren't a member of a particular group, be it socially or at work, or were rejected by the 'in group,' then you were socially ostracized and became an 'outsider.'"

And herein, it would seem, lies the recent popularity of the brand of books known here as kenchu-zokan (meaning "dislike China, hate South Korea").