by Xiang Haoyu

On March 24, an egregious incident shocked the international community. Kodai Murata, a 23-year-old second lieutenant in Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, scaled the wall, broke into the Chinese Embassy in Japan carrying a 31-cm knife, and threatened to kill Chinese diplomatic personnel. This breach of international law laid bare the anti-China public opinion long hidden behind Japan's facade as a "peace-loving nation."

In recent years, multiple opinion polls have shown that only around 10 percent of the Japanese public views China favorably. Despite various disputes between China and Japan, the two are close neighbors with deeply integrated economies and extensive people-to-people exchanges -- making such low numbers highly abnormal. Yet anyone familiar with Japan's China-related public opinion ecology knows the root cause: a long-standing Sinophobic discourse in Japanese society, fueled by rampant anti-China sentiment online. This near-pathological social psychology did not emerge overnight; it is the result of selective filtering, distortion and stereotyped reporting by the Japanese media over many decades.

STEREOTYPED SMEARING VIA MEDIA

While the media cannot determine what people think, they can shape what people think about.

The Japanese media's negative coverage of China plays out in three core ways. First, Japanese media display striking "selective blindness." Within Japan's traditional media landscape, dominated by five national newspapers and major television stations, coverage of China has long focused almost exclusively on military development, territorial disputes, social tensions, economic problems and human rights issues. Meanwhile, objective reporting on China's social progress, scientific and technological advances, poverty alleviation, and urban and rural development is virtually absent.

Within an already stereotyped narrative framework, Japanese media consistently fit China-related news into pre-set templates, such as "China threat," "China collapse," or "China as a pariah state." For instance, China's commemoration of its resistance against Japanese aggression is labeled as "anti-Japanese education"; its overseas infrastructure investment is accused of creating a "debt trap"; scientific and technological innovation is smeared as "technology theft"; and economic growth is dismissed as "statistical falsification." When Japanese people turn on the television or read newspapers, they see a neighbor portrayed as "dangerous, backward and aggressive," and hostility takes root.

While traditional media set the tone, new media and social media inflame such sentiment at the grassroots level. A recent survey in Japan revealed that the crowdsourcing platform CrowdWorks carried numerous posts offering to pay for creating short videos that "denigrate China and praise Japan." This systematic incitement of hatred is algorithmically fed to Japanese internet users, turning anti-China sentiment into a monetizable industry in the age of traffic-driven media, further reinforcing the information cocoon that shapes Japanese public opinion on China.

DEEP-SEATED SOCIAL ANXIETY

Japan's anti-China public opinion ecology is also the product of deep-seated social anxiety and the political demands of right-wing forces.

Since the burst of economic bubbles in the 1990s, Japan has experienced three decades of economic stagnation. Meanwhile, China's rapid rise has shattered Japan's long-standing self-image as the "leader of Asia," plunging Japanese society into a profound sense of loss. By magnifying negative images of its neighbor, the media offer the Japanese public an illusory comfort: "We may be stagnating, but our neighbor is beset with problems." This psychological defense mechanism of alleviating self-anxiety by belittling others has expanded the audience for anti-China reporting.

As Japan's political landscape has shifted rightward, the conservative ruling authorities in pursuit of "normalizing the nation" have sought to portray China as an "external threat," and used it to mobilize support for revising the pacifist constitution and expanding armaments. In this movement, the media have acted as "cheerleaders," reducing complex international relations to a simplistic narrative of confrontation. The Self-Defense Force officer's intrusion is a direct result of this long-term smear campaign.

INSTITUTIONAL MALADIES

Japanese media, under the banner of "press freedom," are plagued by a highly rigid access system and a culture of self-censorship.

The Press Club system is the most criticized institutional malady in Japanese journalism. Government agencies and major political parties maintain their own press clubs, where access to key press conferences and internal briefings is restricted to members of large traditional media outlets, while freelancers, emerging online media and foreign correspondents are excluded.

During former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration, PM's Office-led politics prevailed, and the term "sontaku," anticipating and acting on the unspoken wishes of those in power, gained popularity. When "anti-China" has become political correctness and a magnet for audience attention, media practitioners engage in "sontaku" by filtering out positive information about China to protect their careers and ratings. This automatic censorship is more insidious and pernicious than direct administrative interference.

In conclusion, Japan's anti-China public opinion ecology is a joint product of political manipulation, social anxiety, commercial interests and systemic flaws in the media. When the people of a country can only observe their most important neighbor through a severely distorted prism, the political consequences are bound to be dangerous.

The heinous case of an active-duty Self-Defense Force officer breaking into the Chinese embassy is a wake-up call for Japanese society. The anti-China atmosphere long cultivated by Japan's political circles and media have manifested in extreme hatred among certain individuals, and this now risks backfiring on the rationality and security of Japanese society itself. However, given the current political climate, dismantling the psychological and institutional "high walls" in Japanese public opinion sadly remains a distant prospect.

Editor's note: Xiang Haoyu is a research fellow in the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies, China Institute of International Studies.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.