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Japanese in China See Simmering Tensions

Wed Apr 20, 1:42 PM ET

By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - Japanese-born Kunika Onishi came to China in 1992 to study Chinese for one year. She's still here, with no plans to leave.

 

Over the 13 years, Onishi has been a bartender, owned a coffee bar and now publishes an entertainment magazine — one of the many Japanese who visit China, fall in love with the country and make it their home.

Onishi, 38, watched in anguish as anti-Japanese protests erupted in her adopted land, leaving broken windows at Tokyo's embassy a block from her office.

"I'm not afraid," she said, speaking Chinese with only a hint of a Japanese accent. "I don't feel any personal connection, but of course the protests affect me. When I see them, it breaks my heart."

The unrest is a disturbing reminder to the Japanese who have chosen to make their lives in China of the decades-old grievances and modern rivalries simmering between their two nations.

The most prominent group of Japanese in China is the "salarymen" sent from Japan by their companies. But thousands more come on their own, looking for jobs amid an economic slump at home or to escape their rich but crowded and conformist society.

They open Japanese restaurants or work as photographers or freelance writers for Japanese publications. They are in growing demand to teach Japanese language classes as trade between the two countries booms. And a growing number marry Chinese and have children.

"When I was in university, I studied French. Now everybody studies Chinese," said Junko Haraguchi, a Tokyo-born freelance writer who has lived in Beijing for 12 years. "There are lots of young Japanese people who understand China."

Japan says more than 73,000 of its citizens live in China, but that counts only those with resident visas. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's main think tank, says the true number could be as high as 400,000, with most using tourist or business visas that they renew regularly.

Japan has warned its citizens in China to pay attention to security since the protests began three weekends ago. The demonstrators oppose Tokyo's bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat and accuse Japan of trying to minimize its wartime past with new history textbooks that reduce or omit mention of Japanese atrocities.

But ordinary Japanese have tried to make life go on as usual. In Shanghai, where 20,000 rioters broke windows at the Japanese Consulate and wrecked Japanese restaurants last weekend, the Japanese-language school for foreign children opened on schedule Monday.

Chinese leaders echo the protesters' sentiments but insist their dispute is with Japanese leaders, not their people — a view that Japanese say their Chinese friends share and are quick to emphasize.

"My Chinese friends say, `We really dislike the Japanese government, but you're a good friend,'" said Takefumi Chinushi, a Hiroshima-born chef who owns a Japanese restaurant in Beijing.

Chinushi, 36, moved to China for good in 1999 after repeated visits and a year studying at a Beijing university. He married a Chinese woman, had two sons and bought an apartment. Chinushi and his wife have vacationed in Tibet and China's desert northwest.

"When we got married, no one objected to me. My mother- and father-in-law said I was their son," he said. "I feel as if my mind is half-Japanese and half-Chinese."

Chinushi says with pride that during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, while diners avoided restaurants for fear of the disease, prompting layoffs of cooks and waiters, his business stayed open and he kept paying his 18 Chinese employees.

He shrugged and sighed when asked about the conflict over textbooks and anger at what many in China consider Japan's failure to face up to its aggression that killed millions of Chinese.

"We have to resolve this conflict gradually," he said.

An older group of Japanese have family histories in China, whose northeast was Tokyo's colony in the 1930s and '40s. Seiji Ozawa, the Japanese former conductor of the Boston Symphony, was among those born in the territory then called Manchuria.

Japanese began returning to China in large numbers in the mid-1990s as their country's economic slump dragged on.

"I know parents who are sending their children to China because they can't find jobs and their families are worried that they'll become `parasites,'" said Onishi, using the Japanese slang for grown children who never leave home.

Haraguchi, the writer, arrived in 1993 when her husband's company transferred him to China. She liked the country so much that when he moved back to Tokyo, she stayed in Beijing and visits him twice a year.

"China is more interesting. It changes every day. Japan changes more slowly," she said. "I have no plans to go back to Japan."


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