A Living Legacy (Part Two): Japanese Imperialism—Residual Resentment and an Unforgiving China: The Sports Cartoon as Political Aide-Memoire

Abstract

Chinese-Japanese confrontations have a long history. Recent instances in the mid-twentieth century have been especially bitter. The dark cloud cast by Japanese Imperialism over China has not yet lifted. The gloom has not yet dissipated. It has left a cold climate of residual resentment. The cartoon as incisive political commentary and repository of political memory is an international emblematic means of communication: if needs be of excoriation, condemnation and castigation. It is a dramatic medium through which to transmit a confrontational legacy: nowhere more potent in impact than as a residual aide-memoire of the history of military struggle between China and Japan. Sport can be, in the famous Orwellian declaration, ‘war minus the shooting’. The sports cartoon can, and does, serve as pictorial ‘artillery’. This essay will consider the satirical sports cartoon as a visual ‘armament’ loaded with political statements, political reminders and political projectiles. It will be reviewed in its constructive as well as destructive potential—insofar as this is the case: a medium of both confrontation and conciliation. Nonetheless, a consideration of its role as a condemnatory medium of a confrontational legacy will be paramount.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred … In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

George Orwell ¹

[The Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression] was a noted spectacle in the entire war history , a feat of the Chinese nation, a tremendous undertaking.

Mao Zedong ²

‘Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future’… from the end of the last century (nineteenth century) to the middle of this century (Twentieth century), in these fifty years, Japanese militarism has launched multiple aggressive wars against China, which have caused great damage to the Chinese people, which also have given the Japanese people very painful lessons… China and Japan can only develop a long-term friendship only if we take history as a mirror and prevent the tragedy from happening again.

Jiang Zemin ³

Forgetting history means betrayal. Denying crime means committing crime. We should not hate a nation only because a minority number of the nation’s militarists started the aggressive war. The crime of the war falls on the minority militarists not on its people. But people should never forget the serious crime the invaders committed. All the ignorant attitudes to the aggressive war history, all the beautified words for the nature of the aggressive war, no matter how many times they are expressed, no matter how impressively they are expressed …are a hazard to human peace and justice.

Xi Jinping ⁴