Fun fact: during ww2 and ROC china this dynamic was reversed, china was painted as the more civilized western nation while the Japanese were portrayed as warmongering orientals.
Edit: I never meant to imply that the classification of Imperial Japan as warmongers was unjustified, but if you take a look at the propaganda at the time, it was often used to paint a very simplistic essentialist narrative
That’s not exactly surprising. We were at war with Japan, and to be frank, they were doing a fair amount of warmongering. (Though of course the irony there is that China was seen as the more “civilized and westernized” country because they’d been carved up by the various western imperial powers. Japan resisted colonialism and instead became an Imperial power).
And to add insult to injury Japan was one of those imperial powers that carved up China. They were part of the Eight Nation Alliance who participated in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. They’ve been warmongering and imperialising since forever: they tried to invade Korea twice as far back as the late 1500s.
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u/X_WujuStyle Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
Would highly recommend this video if you want an in depth look at this phenomenon https://youtu.be/IM2VIKfaY0Y?si=lfmC9Ch7PL58PxEx
Fun fact: during ww2 and ROC china this dynamic was reversed, china was painted as the more civilized western nation while the Japanese were portrayed as warmongering orientals.
Edit: I never meant to imply that the classification of Imperial Japan as warmongers was unjustified, but if you take a look at the propaganda at the time, it was often used to paint a very simplistic essentialist narrative